by Isaac Asimov
“Send him up.”
The messenger stayed only long enough to hand Porus an impressively sealed envelope and to say in hearty tone:
“Great news, sir. The system of Sol has qualified for entrance.”
“So what?” snorted Porus beneath his breath as the other left “We all knew it was coming.”
He ripped off the outer sheath of cello-fiber from the envelope and removed the sheaf of papers from within. He glanced through them and grimaced.
“Oh, Rigel! ”
“What’s wrong?” asked Lo-fan.
“Those politicians keep bothering me with the most inconsequential things. You’d think there wasn’t another psychologist on Eron. Look! We’ve been expecting the Solarian System to solve the principle of the hyperatomo any century now. They’ve finally done it and an expedition of theirs landed on Alpha Centauri. At once, there’s a politicians’ holiday! We must send an expedition of our own to ask them to join the Federation. And, of course, we must have a psychologist along to ask them in a nice way so as to be sure of getting the right reaction, because, to be sure, there isn’t a man in the army that ever gets proper training in psychology.”
Lo-fan nodded seriously. “I know, I know. We have the same trouble out our way. They don’t need psychology until they get into trouble and then they come running.”
“Well, it’s a cinch I’m not going to Sol. This sleeping squid is too important to neglect. It’s a routine job, anyway-this business of raking in new worlds; a Type A reaction that any sophomore can handle.”
“Whom will you send?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got several good juniors under me that can do this sort of thing with their eyes closed. I’ll send one of them. And meanwhile, I’ll be seeing you at the faculty meeting tomorrow, won’t I?”
“You will-and hearing me, too. I’m making a speech on the finger-touch stimulus.”
“Good! I’ve done work on it, so I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say. Till tomorrow, then.”
Left alone, Porus turned once more to the official report on the Solarian System which the messenger had handed him. He leafed through it leisurely, without particular interest, and finally put it down with a sigh.
“Lor Haridin could do it,” he muttered to himself. “He’s a good kid-deserves a break.”
He lifted his tiny bulk out of the chair and, with the report under his arm, left his office and trotted down the long corridor outside. As he stopped before a door at the far end, the automatic flash blazed up and a voice within called out to him to enter.
The Rigellian opened the door and poked his head inside. “Busy, Haridin?”
Lor Haridin looked up and sprang to his feet at once. “Great space, boss, no! I haven’t had anything to do since I finished work on anger reactions. You’ve got something for me, maybe?”
“I have-if you think you’re up to it. You’ve heard of the Solarian System, haven’t you?”
“Sure! The visors are full of it. They’ve got interstellar travel, haven’t they?”
“That’s right. An expedition is leaving Alpha Centauri for Sol in a month. They’ll need a psychologist to do the fine work, and I was thinking of sending you.”
The young scientist reddened with delight to the very top of his hairless dome. “Do you mean it, boss?”
“Why not? That is-if you think you can do it.”
“Of course I can.” Haridin drew himself up in offended hauteur. “Type A reaction! I can’t miss.”
“You’ll have to learn their language, you know, and administer the stimulus in the Solarian tongue. It’s not always an easy job.”
Haridin shrugged. “I still can’t miss. In a case like this, translation need only be seventy-five percent effective to get ninety-nine and six tenths percent of the desired result. That was one of the problems I had to solve on my qualifying exam. So you can’t trip me up that way.”
Porus laughed. “All right, Haridin, I know you can do it. Clean up everything here at the university and sign up for indefinite leave. And if you can, Haridin, write some sort of paper on these Solarians. If it’s any good, you might get senior status on the basis of it.”
The junior psychologist frowned, “But, boss, that’s old stuff. Humanoid reactions are as well known as… as- You can’t write anything on them.”
“There’s always something if you look hard enough, Haridin. Nothing is well known; remember that. If you’ll look at Sheet 25 of the report, for instance, you’ll find an item concerning the care with which the Solarians armed themselves on leaving their ship.”
The other turned to the proper page. “That’s reasonable,” said he. “An entirely normal reaction.”
“Certainly. But they insisted on retaining their weapons throughout their stay, even when they were greeted and welcomed by fellow Humanoids. That’s quite a perceptible deviation from the normal. Investigate it-it might be worth while.”
“As you say, boss. Thanks a lot for the chance you’re giving me. And say-how’s the squid coming along?”
Porus wrinkled his nose. “My sixth try folded up and died yesterday. It’s disgusting.” And with that, he was gone.
Tan Porus of Rigel trembled with rage as he folded the handful of papers he held in two and tore them across. He plugged in the telecaster with a jerk.
“Get me Santins of the math department immediately,” he snapped.
His green eyes shot fire at the placid figure that appeared on the visor almost at once. He shook his fist at the image.
“What on Eron’s the idea of that analysis you sent me just now, you Betelgeusian slime worm?”
The image’s eyebrows shot up in mild surprise. “Don’t blame me, Porus. They were your equations, not mine. Where did you get them?”
“Never mind where I got them. That’s the business of the psychology department.”
“All right! And solving them is the business of the mathematics department. That’s the seventh set of the damnedest sort of screwy equations I’ve ever seen. It was the worst yet. You made at least seventeen assumptions which you had no right to make. It took us two weeks to straighten you out, and finally we boiled it down-”
Porus jumped as if stung. “I know what you boiled it down to. I just tore up the sheets. You take eighteen independent variables in twenty equations, representing two months of work, and solve them out at the bottom of the last, last page with that gem of oracular wisdom-’a’ equals ‘a.’ All that work-and all I get is an identity.”
“It’s still not my fault, Porus. You argued in circles, and in mathematics that means an identity and there’s nothing you can do about it.” His lips twitched in a slow smile. “What are you kicking about, anyway? ‘A’ does equal ‘a,’ doesn’t it?”
“ Shut up! ” The telecaster went dead, and the psychologist closed his lips tightly and boiled inwardly. The light signal above the telecaster flashed to life again.
“What do you want now?”
It was the calm, impersonal voice of the receptionist below that answered him. “A messenger from the government, sir.”
“Damn the government! Tell them I’m dead.”
“It’s important, sir. Lor Haridin has returned from Sol and wants to see you.”
Porus frowned. “Sol? What Sol? Oh, I remember. Send him up, but tell him to make it snappy.”
“Come in, Haridin,” he said a little later, voice calmer, as the young Arcturian, a bit thinner, a bit more weary than he had been six months earlier when he left the Arcturian System, entered.
“Well, young man? Did you write the paper?”
The Arcturian gazed intently upon his fingernails. “No, sir!”
“Why not?” Porus’ green eyes peered narrowly at the other. “Don’t tell me you’ve had trouble.”
“Quite, a bit, boss.” The words came with an effort. “The psychological board itself has sent for you after hearing my report. The fact of the matter is that the Solarian System has… has refus
ed to join the Federation.”
Tan Porus shot out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box and landed, purely by chance, on his feet.
“What!!”
Haridin nodded miserably and cleared his throat.
“Now, by the Great Dark Nebula,” swore the Rigellian, distractedly, “if this isn’t one sweet day! First, they tell me that ‘a’ equals ‘a,’ and then you come in and tell me you muffed a Type A reaction- muffed it completely! ”
The junior psychologist fired up. “I didn’t muff it. There’s something wrong with the Solarians themselves. They’re not normal. When I landed they went wild over us. There was a fantastic celebration-entirely unrestrained. Nothing was too good for us. I delivered the invitation before their parliament in their own language-a simple one which they call Esperanto. I’ll stake my life that my translation was ninety-five percent effective.”
“Well? And then?”
“I can’t understand the rest, boss. First, there was a neutral reaction and I was a little surprised, and then”-he shuddered in retrospect-”in seven days-only seven days, boss-the entire planet had reversed itself completely. I couldn’t follow their psychology, not by a hundred miles. I’ve brought home copies of their newspapers of the time in which they objected to joining with ‘alien monstrosities’ and refused to be ‘ruled by inhumans of worlds parsecs away.’ I ask you, does that make sense?
“And that’s only the beginning. It was light years worse than that. Why, good Galaxy, I went all the way into Type G reactions, trying to figure them out, and couldn’t. In the end, we had to leave. We were in actual physical danger from those… those Earthmen, as they call themselves.”
Tan Porus chewed his lip a while. “Interesting! Have you your report with you?”
“No. The psychological board has it. They’ve been going over it with a microscope all day.”
“And what do they say?”
The young Arcturian winced. “They don’t say it openly, but they leave a strong impression of thinking the report an inaccurate one.”
“Well, I’ll decide about that after I’ve read it. Meanwhile, come with me to Parliamentary Hall and you can answer a few questions on the way.”
Joselin Arn of Alpha Centauri rubbed stubbled jaws with his huge, six-fingered hand and peered from under beetling brows at the semicircle of diversified faces that stared down upon him. The psychological board was composed of psychologists of a score of worlds, and their united gaze was not the easiest thing in the world to withstand.
“We have been informed,” began Frian Obel, head of the board and native of Vega, home of the green-skinned men, “that those sections of the report dealing with Sol’s military state are your work.”
Joselin Arn inclined his head in silent agreement.
“And you are prepared to confirm what you have stated here, in spite of its inherent improbability? You are no psychologist, you know.”
“No! But I’m a soldier!” The Centaurian’s jaws set stubbornly as his bass voice rumbled through the hall. “I don’t know equations and I don’t know graphs-but I do know spaceships. I’ve seen theirs and I’ve seen ours, and theirs are better. I’ve seen their first interstellar ship. Give them a hundred years and they’ll have a better hyperatomos than we have. I’ve seen their weapons. They’ve got almost everything we have, at a stage in their history millennia before us. What they haven’t got-they’ll get, and soon. What they have got, they’ll improve.
“I’ve seen their munitions plants. Ours are more advanced, but theirs are more efficient. I’ve seen their soldiers-and I’d rather fight with them than against them.
“I’ve said all that in the report. I say it again now.”
His brusque sentences came to an end and Frian Obel waited for the murmur from the men about him to cease.
“And the rest of their science; medicine, chemistry, physics? What of them?”
“I’m not the best judge of those. You have the report there of those who know, however, and to the best of my knowledge I confirm them.”
“And so these Solarians are true Humanoids?”
“By the circling worlds of Centauri, yes!”
The old scientist drew himself back in his chair with a peevish gesture and cast a rapid, frowning glance up and down the length of the table.
“Colleagues,” he said, “we make little progress by rehashing this mess of impossibilities. We have a race of Humanoids of a superlatively technological turn; possessing at the same time an intrinsically unscientific belief in supernatural forces, an incredibly childish predilection toward individuality, singly and in groups, and, worst of all, lack of sufficient vision to embrace a galaxy-wide culture.”
He glared down upon the lowering Centaurian before him. “Such a race must exist if we are to believe the report-and fundamental axioms of psychology must crumble. But I, for one, refuse to believe any such-to be vulgar about it-comet gas. This is plainly a case of mismanagement to be investigated by the proper authorities. I hope you all agree with me when I say that this report be consigned to the scrap heap and that a second expedition led by an expert in his line, not by an inexperienced junior psychologist or a soldier-”
The drone of the scientist’s voice was buried suddenly in the crash of an iron fist against the table. Joselin Am, his huge bulk writhing in anger, lost his temper and gave vent to martial wrath.
“Now, by the writhing spawn of Templis, by the worms that crawl and the gnats that fly, by the cesspools and the plague spots, and by the hooded death itself, I won’t allow this . Are you to sit there with your theories and your long-range wisdom and deny what I have seen with my eyes? Are my eyes”-and they flashed fire as he spoke-”to deny themselves because of a few wriggling marks your palsied hands trace on paper?
“To the core of Centauri with these armchair wise men, say I-and the psychologists first of all. Blast these men who bury themselves in their books and their laboratories and are blind to what goes on in the living world outside. Psychology, is it? Rotten, putrid-”
A tap on his belt caused him to whirl, eyes staring, fists clenched. For a moment, he looked about vainly. Then, turning his gaze downward, he found himself looking into the enigmatic green eyes of a pygmy of a man, whose piercing stare seemed to drench his anger with ice water.
“I know you, Joselin Am,” said Tan Porus slowly, picking his words carefully. “You’re a brave man and a good soldier, but you don’t like psychologists, I see. That is wrong of you, for it is on psychology that the political success of the Federation rests. Take it away and our Union crumbles, our great Federation melts away, the Galactic System is shattered.” His voice descended into a soft, liquid croon. “You have sworn an oath to defend the System against all its enemies, Joselin Am-and you yourself have now become its greatest. You strike at its foundations. You dig at its roots. You poison it at its source. You are dishonored. You are disgraced. You are a traitor.”
The Centaurian soldier shook his head helplessly. As Porus spoke, deep and bitter remorse filled him. Recollection of his words of a moment ago lay heavy on his conscience. When the psychologist finished, Am bent his head and wept. Tears ran down those lined, war-scarred cheeks, to which for forty years now they had been a stranger.
Porus spoke again, and this time his voice boomed like a thunderclap: “Away with your mewling whine, you coward. Danger is at hand. Man the guns! ”
Joselin Am snapped to attention; the sorrow that had filled him a bare second before was gone as if it had never existed.
The room rocked with laughter and the soldier grasped the situation. It had been Porus’ way of punishing him. With his complete knowledge of the devious ins and outs of the Humanoid mind, he had only to push the proper button, and-
The Centaurian bit his lip in embarrassment, but said nothing.
But Tan Porus, himself, did not laugh. To tease the soldier was one thing; to humiliate him, quite another. With a bound, he was on a chair and laid his small hand on the other’s
massive shoulder.
“No offense, my friend-a little lesson, that is all. Fight the sub-humanoids and the hostile environments of fifty worlds. Dare space in a leaky rattletrap of a ship. Defy whatever dangers you wish. But never, never offend a psychologist. He might get angry in earnest the next time.”
Arn bent his head back and laughed-a gigantic roar of mirth that shook the room with its earthquake-like lustiness.
“Your advice is well taken, psychologist. Bum me with an atomo, if I don’t think you’re right.” He strode from the room with his shoulders still heaving with suppressed laughter.
Porus hopped off the chair and turned to face the board.
“This is an interesting race of Humanoids we have stumbled upon, colleagues.”
“Ah,” said Obel, dryly, “the great Porus feels bound to come to his pupil’s defense. Your digestion seems to have improved, since you feel yourself capable of swallowing Haridin’s report.”
Haridin, standing, head bowed, in the corner, reddened angrily, but did not move.
Porus frowned, but his voice kept to its even tone. “I do, and the report, if properly analyzed, will give rise to a revolution in the science. It is a psychological gold mine; and Homo Sol, the find of the millennium.”
“Be specific. Tan Porus,” drawled someone. “Your tricks are all very well for a Centaurian blockhead, but we remain unimpressed.”
The fiery little Rigellian emitted a gurgle of anger. He shook one tiny fist in the direction of the last speaker.
“I’ll be more specific, Inar Tubal, you hairy space bug.” Prudence and anger waged a visible battle within him. “There is more to a Humanoid than you think-certainly far more than you mental cripples can understand. Just to show you what you don’t know, you desiccated group of fossils, I’ll undertake to show you a bit of psycho-technology that’ll knock the guts right out of you. Panic, morons, panic! Worldwide panic!”
There was an awful silence. “Did you say world-wide panic?” stuttered Frian Obel, his green skin turning gray. “Panic?”
“Yes, you parrot. Give me six months and fifty assistants and I’ll show you a world of Humanoids in panic.”
