“Your Majesty, this is Colonel Handrosan, the officer who handled the affair at the University.”
“And a very good piece of work, colonel.” He shook hands with him. “Don’t be surprised if it’s remembered next Honors Day. Did you bring Khane and the two professors?”
“They’re down on the lower landing-stage, Your Majesty. We’re delaying the students, to give Your Majesty time to talk to them.”
“We’ll see them now. My study will do.” The officer saluted and went away. He turned to Count Tammsan. “That’s why I asked Prince Ganzay to invite you here. This thing’s become too public to be ignored; some sort of action will have to be taken. I’m going to talk to the students; I want to find out just what happened before I commit myself to anything. Well, gentlemen, let’s go to my study.”
Count Tammsan looked around, bewildered. “But I don’t understand——” He fell into step with Paul and the Minister of Security; a squad of Security Guards fell in behind them. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” he complained.
An emperor about to have his throne yanked out from under him, and a minister about to stage a coup d’etat, taking time out to settle a trifling academic squabble. One thing he did understand, though, was that the Ministry of Education was getting some very bad publicity at a time when it could be least afforded. Prince Travann was telling him about the hooligans’ attack on the marching students, and that worried him even more. Nonworking hooligans acted as voting-bloc bosses ordered; voting-bloc bosses acted on orders from the political manipulators of Cartels and pressure-groups, and action downward through the nonworkers was usually accompanied by action upward through influences to which ministers were sensitive.
* * * *
There were a dozen Security Guards in black tunics, and as many Household Thorans in red kilts, in the hall outside the study, fraternizing amicably. They hurried apart and formed two ranks, and the Thoran officer with them saluted.
Going into the study, he went to his desk; Count Tammsan lit a cigarette and puffed nervously, and sat down as though he were afraid the chair would collapse under him. Prince Travann sank into another chair and relaxed, closing his eyes. There was a bit of wafer on the floor by Paul’s chair, dropped by the little dog that morning. He stooped and picked it up, laying it on his desk, and sat looking at it until the door screen flashed and buzzed. Then he pressed the release button.
Colonel Handrosan ushered the three University men in ahead of him—Khane, with a florid, arrogant face that showed worry under the arrogance; Dandrik, gray-haired and stoop-shouldered, looking irritated; Faress, young, with a scrubby red mustache, looking bellicose. He greeted them collectively and invited them to sit, and there was a brief uncomfortable silence which everybody expected him to break.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “we want to get the facts about this affair in some kind of order. I wish you’d tell me, as briefly and as completely as possible, what you know about it.”
“There’s the man who started it!” Khane declared, pointing at Faress.
“Professor Faress had nothing to do with it,” Colonel Handrosan stated flatly. “He and his wife were in their apartment, packing to move out, when it started. Somebody called him and told him about the fighting at the stadium, and he went there at once to talk his students into dispersing. By that time, the situation was completely out of hand; he could do nothing with the students.
“Well, I think we ought to find out, first of all, why Professor Faress was dismissed,” Prince Travann said. “It will take a good deal to convince me that any teacher able to inspire such loyalty in his students is a bad teacher, or deserves dismissal.”
“As I understand,” Paul said, “the dismissal was the result of a disagreement between Professor Faress and Professor Dandrik about an experiment on which they were working. I believe, an experiment to fix more exactly the velocity of accelerated subnucleonic particles. Beta micropositos, wasn’t it, Chancellor Khane?”
Khane looked at him in surprise. “Your Majesty, I know nothing about that. Professor Dandrik is head of the physics department; he came to me, about six months ago, and told me that in his opinion this experiment was desirable. I simply deferred to his judgment and authorized it.”
“Your Majesty has just stated the purpose of the experiment,” Dandrik said. “For centuries, there have been inaccuracies in mathematical descriptions of subnucleonic events, and this experiment was undertaken in the hope of eliminating these inaccuracies.” He went into a lengthy mathematical explanation.
“Yes, I understand that, professor. But just what was the actual experiment, in terms of physical operations?”
* * * *
Dandrik looked helpless for a moment. Faress, who had been choking back a laugh, interrupted:
“Your Majesty, we were using the big turbo-linear accelerator to project fast micropositos down an evacuated tube one kilometer in length, and clocking them with light, the velocity of which has been established almost absolutely. I will say that with respect to the light, there were no observable inaccuracies at any time, and until the micropositos were accelerated to 16.067543333-1/3 times light-speed, they registered much as expected. Beyond that velocity, however, the target for the micropositos began registering impacts before the source registered emission, although the light target was still registering normally. I notified Professor Dandrik about this, and——”
“You notified him. Wasn’t he present at the time?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Your Majesty, I am head of the physics department of the University. I have too much administrative work to waste time on the technical aspects of experiments like this,” Dandrik interjected.
“I understand. Professor Faress was actually performing the experiment. You told Professor Dandrik what had happened. What then?”
“Why, Your Majesty, he simply declared that the limit of accuracy had been reached, and ordered the experiment dropped. He then reported the highest reading before this anticipation effect was observed as the newly established limit of accuracy in measuring the velocity of accelerated micropositos, and said nothing whatever in his report about the anticipation effect.”
“I read a summary of the report. Why, Professor Dandrik, did you omit mentioning this slightly unusual effect?”
“Why, because the whole thing was utterly preposterous, that’s why!” Dandrik barked; and then hastily added, “Your Imperial Majesty.” He turned and glared at Faress; professors do not glare at galactic emperors. “Your Majesty, the limit of accuracy had been reached. After that, it was only to be expected that the apparatus would give erratic reports.”
“It might have been expected that the apparatus would stop registering increased velocity relative to the light-speed standard, or that it would begin registering disproportionately,” Faress said. “But, Your Majesty, I’ll submit that it was not to be expected that it would register impacts before emissions. And I’ll add this. After registering this slight apparent jump into the future, there was no proportionate increase in anticipation with further increase of acceleration. I wanted to find out why. But when Professor Dandrik saw what was happening, he became almost hysterical, and ordered the accelerator shut down as though he were afraid it would blow up in his face.”
* * * *
“I think it has blown up in his face,” Prince Travann said quietly. “Professor, have you any theory, or supposition, or even any wild guess, as to how this anticipation effect occurs?”
“Yes, Your Highness. I suspect that the apparent anticipation is simply an observational illusion, similar to the illusion of time-reversal experienced when it was first observed, though not realized, that positrons sometimes exceeded light-speed.”
“Why, that’s what I’ve been saying all along!” Dandrik broke in. “The whole thing is an illusion, due——”
“To having reached the limit of observational accuracy; I understand, Professor Dandrik. Go on, Professor Faress.�
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“I think that beyond 16.067543333-1/3 times light-speed, the micropositos ceased to have any velocity at all, velocity being defined as rate of motion in four-dimensional space-time. I believe they moved through the three spatial dimensions without moving at all in the fourth, temporal, dimension. They made that kilometer from source to target, literally, in nothing flat. Instantaneity.”
That must have been the first time he had actually come out and said it. Dandrik jumped to his feet with a cry that was just short of being a shriek.
“He’s crazy! Your Majesty, you mustn’t…that is, well, I mean—Please, Your Majesty, don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s raving!”
“He knows perfectly well what he’s saying, and it probably scares him more than it does you. The difference is that he’s willing to face it and you aren’t.”
The difference was that Faress was a scientist and Dandrik was a science teacher. To Faress, a new door had opened, the first new door in eight hundred years. To Dandrik, it threatened invalidation of everything he had taught since the morning he had opened his first class. He could no longer say to his pupils, “You are here to learn from me.” He would have to say, more humbly, “We are here to learn from the Universe.”
It had happened so many times before, too. The comfortable and established Universe had fitted all the known facts—and then new facts had been learned that wouldn’t fit it. The third planet of the Sol system had once been the center of the Universe, and then Terra, and Sol, and even the galaxy, had been forced to abdicate centricity. The atom had been indivisible—until somebody divided it. There had been intangible substance that had permeated the Universe, because it had been necessary for the transmission of light—until it was demonstrated to be unnecessary and nonexistent. And the speed of light had been the ultimate velocity, once, and could be exceeded no more than the atom could be divided. And light-speed had been constant, regardless of distance from source, and the Universe, to explain certain observed phenomena, had been believed to be expanding simultaneously in all directions. And the things that had happened in psychology, when psi-phenomena had become too obvious to be shrugged away.
“And then, when Dr. Dandrik ordered you to drop this experiment, just when it was becoming interesting, you refused?”
“Your Majesty, I couldn’t stop, not then. But Dr. Dandrik ordered the apparatus dismantled and scrapped, and I’m afraid I lost my head. Told him I’d punch his silly old face in, for one thing.”
“You admit that?” Chancellor Khane cried.
“I think you showed admirable self-restraint in not doing it. Did you explain to Chancellor Khane the importance of this experiment?”
“I tried to, Your Majesty, but he simply wouldn’t listen.”
“But, Your Majesty!” Khane expostulated. “Professor Dandrik is head of the department, and one of the foremost physicists of the Empire, and this young man is only one of the junior assistant-professors. Isn’t even a full professor, and he got his degree from some school away off-planet. University of Brannerton on Gimli.”
“Were you a pupil of Professor Vann Evaratt?” Prince Travann asked sharply.
“Why, yes, sir. I——”
“Ha, no wonder!” Dandrik crowed. “Your Majesty, that man’s an out-and-out charlatan! He was kicked out of the University here ten years ago, and I’m surprised he could even get on the faculty of a school like Brannerton, on a planet like Gimli.”
“Why, you stupid old fool!” Faress yelled at him. “You aren’t enough of a physicist to oil robots in Vann Evaratt’s lab!”
“There, Your Majesty,” Khane said. “You see how much respect for authority this hooligan has!”
On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects authority. Whether it’s respectable or not.
Count Tammsan laughed, and he realized that he must have spoken aloud. Nobody else seemed to have gotten the joke.
“Well, how about the riot, now?” he asked. “Who started that?”
“Colonel Handrosan made an investigation on the spot,” Prince Travann said. “May I suggest that we hear his report?”
“Yes indeed. Colonel?”
Handrosan rose and stood with his hands behind his back, looking fixedly at the wall behind the desk.
“Your Majesty, the students of Professor Faress’ advanced subnuclear physics class, postgraduate students, all of them, were told of Professor Faress’ dismissal by a faculty member who had taken over the class this morning. They all got up and walked out in a body, and gathered outdoors on the campus to discuss the matter. At the next class break, they were joined by other science students, and they went into the stadium, where they were joined, half an hour later, by more students who had learned of the dismissal in the meantime. At no time was the gathering disorderly. The stadium is covered by a viewscreen pickup which is fitted with a recording device; there is a complete audio-visual of the whole thing, including the attack on them by the campus police.
“This attack was ordered by Chancellor Khane, at about 1100; the chief of the campus police was told to clear the stadium, and when he asked if he was to use force, Chancellor Khane told him to use anything he wanted to.”
“I did not! I told him to get the students out of the stadium, but——”
“The chief of campus police carries a personal wire recorder,” Handrosan said, in his flat monotone. “He has a recording of the order, in Chancellor Khane’s own voice. I heard it myself. The police,” he continued, “first tried to use gas, but the wind was against them. They then tried to use sono-stunners, but the students rushed them and overwhelmed them. If Your Majesty will permit a personal opinion, while I do not sympathize with their subsequent attack on the Administration Center, they were entirely within their rights in defending themselves in the stadium, and it’s hard enough to stop trained and disciplined troops when they are winning. After defeating the police, they simply went on by what might be called the momentum of victory.”
“Then you’d say that it’s positively established that the students were behaving in a peacable and orderly manner in the stadium when they were attacked, and that Chancellor Khane ordered the attack personally?”
“I would, emphatically, Your Majesty.”
“I think we’ve done enough here, gentlemen.” He turned to Count Tammsan. “This is, jointly, the affair of Education and Security. I would suggest that you and Prince Travann join in a formal and public inquiry, and until all the facts have been established and recorded and action decided upon, the dismissal of Professor Faress be reversed and he be restored to his position on the faculty.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Tammsan agreed. “And I think it would be a good idea for Chancellor Khane to take a vacation till then, too.”
“I would further suggest that, as this microposito experiment is crucial to the whole question, it should be repeated. Under the personal direction of Professor Faress.”
“I agree with that, Your Majesty,” Prince Travann said. “If it’s as important as I think it is, Professor Dandrik is greatly to be censured for ordering it stopped and for failing to report this anticipation effect.”
“We’ll consult about the inquiry, including the experiment, tomorrow, Your Highness,” Tammsan told Travann.
Paul rose, and everybody rose with him. “That being the case, you gentlemen are all excused. The students’ procession ought to be arriving, now, and I want to tell them what’s going to be done. Prince Travann, Count Tammsan; do you care to accompany me?”
* * * *
Going up to the central terrace in front of the Octagon Tower, he turned to Count Tammsan.
“I notice you laughed at that remark of mine about Aditya,” he said. “Have you met the First Citizen?”
“Only on screen, sir. He was at me for about an hour, this morning. It seems that they are reforming the educational system on Aditya. On Aditya, everything gets reformed every ten years, whether it needs it or
not. He came here to find somebody to take charge of the reformation.”
He stopped short, bringing the others to a halt beside him, and laughed heartily.
“Well, we’ll send First Citizen Yaggo away happy; we’ll make him a present of the most distinguished educator on Odin.”
“Khane?” Tammsan asked.
“Khane. Isn’t it wonderful; if you have a few problems, you have trouble, but if you have a whole lot of problems, they start solving each other. We get a chance to get rid of Khane and create a vacancy that can be filled by somebody big enough to fill it; the Ministry of Education gets out from under a nasty situation; First Citizen Yaggo gets what he thinks he wants——”
“And if I know Khane and if I know the People’s Commonwealth of Aditya, it won’t be a year before Yaggo has Khane shot or stuffs him into jail, and then the Space Navy will have an excuse to visit Aditya, and Aditya’ll never be the same afterward,” Prince Travann added.
The students massed on the front lawns were still cheering as they went down after addressing them. The Security Guards were conspicuously absent and it was a detail of red-kilted Thoran riflemen who met them as they entered the hall to the Session Chamber. Prince Ganzay approached, attended by two Household Guard officers, a human and a Thoran. Count Tammsan looked from one to the other of his companions, bewildered. The bewildering thing was that everything was as it should be.
“Well, gentlemen,” Paul said, “I’m sure that both of you will want to confer for a moment with your colleagues in the Rotunda before the Session. Please don’t feel obliged to attend me further.”
Prince Ganzay approached as they went down the hall. “Your Majesty, what is going on here?” he demanded querulously. “Just who is in control of the Palace—you or Prince Travann? And where is His Imperial Highness, and where is General Dorflay?”
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 106
