Psichopath
Page 3
of it--anywhere. It _has_ to be psionic."
"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.
"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as ifin full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of theMaster: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter howimprobable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothingleft, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely amatter of mental delusion."
"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And soam I."
Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decenttelepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."
"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath saidruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll letyou know."
"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy yourtelepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious tofind out what he's thinking."
MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door inthe "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke witha soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside thetwo-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the timethey had been down there.
"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tiredvoice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that longto evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."
* * * * *
It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and itwas purely for the edification of the man who was standing on theother side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath hadactually seen him as yet.
Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used theword, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one.Membership in the "core" group of the _Society for Mystical andMetaphysical Research_ required, above all, _understanding_. And, withthat understanding, a conversation between two members need consistonly of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.
The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding ofanother human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Withoutthat understanding, no human being can be completely free.
And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation tothe actual process that must take place. _Total_ understanding, in onesense, would require that a person actually _become_ anotherperson--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, everyemotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge ofmemory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personalidentity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.
Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. Theresult would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as aconsequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.
Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, inturn, requires _two_ minds--not a fusion of identity. There must beone to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays bothroles.
_Love thy neighbor as thyself._ But the original Greek word wouldtranslate better as "respect and understand" than as the modernEnglish "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools;they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate theirknowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point isreached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.
First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates throughsimilarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself.The next most similar thing is another human mind.
From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in theuniverse can be graded according to their similarity to each other,and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.
Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always belinked by a _tertium quid_--a "third thing" which is similar to both.This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the humanimagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which thehuman mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists.With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the humanmind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.
One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was theconstruction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had madetremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still inthe alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only beworked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbolsalready established, including languages and mathematics. None werecompletely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within theirnarrow limits.
As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbologyused by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. Theunderstanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond thecritical point. Anyone who could break it was, _ipso facto_, a memberof the S.M.M.R.
Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking placebetween two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used atthe same time.
* * * * *
MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei acceleratorwas just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he hadknown that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of thethick wall.
MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello,Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"
The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffincame into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see howyou were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, withjust a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind getsbogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernibleconnection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, Idrop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."
Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and heweighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had hadthe build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had addedpoundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but hestill looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shockof heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed tohave a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and ahalf to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he wastalking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, hisface usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, andonly for seconds at a time.
"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath saidbanteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument caseand took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to theacceleration tube.
"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think itwill be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"
"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.
"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why theexciter arced across. It shouldn't have."
"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the sametime, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament ofNordred's thoughts that he could reach.
"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in theinsulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind,as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of hissubconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper asyet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.
There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weaknessmust have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pinhis suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with theRedford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.
"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancingthese babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteronaccelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."
Nordred nodded absently. "I kn
ow. But our work can't be done withanything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineeringdetails of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he wasprimarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily aphysicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but theactual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. RogerKent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These fourand their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed totest Dr. Nordred's theories.
MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men wentout of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up