by Isaac Asimov
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?' Poms' 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 that the Solarian System has… has refused 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; posses
sing 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 Arn, his huge bulk writhing in anger, lost bis 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, / 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 Arn,' 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 Arn - 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 finislied, Arn 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 thunder-clap: 'Away with your mewling whine, you coward. Danger is at hand. Man the guns!'
Joselin Arn 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 Human-oid 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 subhumanoids 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 earthquakelike 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 millenium.'
'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.'
Obel attempted vainly to answer. His mouth worked in a heroic attempt to remain serious - and failed. As though by signal, the entire board dropped its dignity and leaned back in a single burst of laughter.
'I remember,' gasped Inar Tubal of Sirius, his round face streaked with tears of pure joy, 'a student of mine who once claimed to have discovered a stimulus that would induce worldwide panic. When I checked his results, I came across an exponent with a misplaced decimal point. He was only ten orders of magnitude out of the way. How many decimal points have you misplaced, Colleague Porus?'
'What of Kraut's Law, Porus, which says you can't panic more than five Humanoids at a time? Shall we pass a resolution repealing it? And maybe the atomic theory as well, while we're about it?' and Semper Gor of Capella cackled gleefully.
Porus climbed onto the table and snatched Obel's gavel. 'The next one who laughs is getting this over his empty head.' There was sudden silence.
'I'm taking fifty assistants,' shouted -the green-eyed Rigel-lian, 'and Joselin Arn is taking me to Sol. I want five of you to come with me - Inar Tubal, Semper Gor and any three others
—…so that I can watch their stupid faces when I've done what I said I would.' He hefted the gavel, threateningly. 'Well?'
Frian Obel gazed at the ceiling placidly. 'All right, Porus. Tubal, Gor, Helvin, Prat and Winson can go with you. At the end of the specified time, we'll witness world-wide panic which will be very gratifying - or we'll watch you eat your words, and how much more gratifying that would be.' And with that, he chuckled very quietly to himself.
Tan Porus stared thoughtfully out the window. Terrapolis, capital city of Earth, sprawled beneath him to the very edge of the horizon. Its muted roar reached even to the half-mile height at which he stood.
There was something over that city, invisible and intangible but none the less real. Its presence was only too evident to the small psychologist. The choking cloak of dank fear that spread over the metropolis beneath was one of his own weaving - a horrible cloak of dark uncertainty, that clutched with clammy fingers at the hearts of Mankind and stopped short - just short
—…of actual panic.
The roar of the city had voices in it, and the voices were tiny ones of fear.
The Rigellian turned away in disgust. 'Hey, Haridin,' he roared.
The young Arcturian turned away from the televisor. 'Cal
ling me, boss?'
'What do you think I'm doing? Talking to myself? What's the latest from Asia?'
'Nothing new. The stimuli just aren't strong enough. The yellow men seem to be more stolid of disposition than the white dominants of America and Europe. I've sent out orders not to increase the stimuli, though.'
'No, they mustn't,' agreed Porus. 'We can't risk active panic.' He ruminated in silence. 'Listen, we're about through. Tell them to hit a few of the big cities - they're more susceptible -and quit.'
He turned to the window again. 'Space, what a world - what a world! An entirely new branch of psychology has opened up
—…one we never dreamed of. Mob psychology, Haridin, mob psychology.' He shook his head impressively.
'There's lots of suffering, though, boss,' muttered the younger man. 'This passive panic has completely paralyzed trade and commerce. The business life of the entire planet is stagnant. The poor government is helpless - they don't know what's wrong.'
'They'll find out - when I'm ready. And, as for the suffering
—…well, I don't like it, either, but it's all a means to an end, a damned important end.'
There followed a short silence, and then Porus' lips twitched into a nasty smile. 'Those five nitwits returned from Europe yesterday, didn't they?'
Haridin smiled in turn and nodded vigorously. 'And hopping sore! Your predictions have checked to the fifth decimal place. They're fit to be tied.'
'Good! I'm only sorry I can't see Obel's face right now, after the last message I sent him. And, incidentally' - his voice dropped lower - 'what's the latest on them?'
Haridin raised two fingers. 'Two weeks, and they'll be here.'
'Two weeks… two weeks,' gurgled Porus jubilantly. He rose and made for the door. 'I think I'll find my dear, dear colleagues and pass the time of day.'
The five scientists of the board looked up from their notes and fell into an embarrassed silence as Porus entered.
The latter smiled impishly. 'Notes satisfactory, gentlemen? Found some fifty or sixty fallacies in my fundamental assumptions, no doubt?'
Hybron Prat of Alpha Cepheus rumpled the gray fuzz he called hair. 'I don't trust the unholy tricks this crazy mathematical notation of yours plays.'
