Ability Quotient

by Mack Reynolds

  Harmon sucked in breath, “Four?”

  “Yes, four. Not three.”

  “All right, Caine. We’ll both be there.”

  “No, just him. You’ll be up above in a police helio-jet, waiting for me to call you in.”

  “I told you, I’ve just been bounced.”

  “I suspect you have close friends in local Security. You be there, Harmon.”

  Frank Harmon, his face still working, held silence for a moment. Then he said, “Check… Killer.” His face faded out.

  Bert Alshuler turned back to the other two. Jim, tall glass in hand, had resumed his comfort chair. His easygoing face registered boredom. “Fun and games,” he said.

  Bert said, “Have you recharged your shooter since you used it?”

  “Nope.”

  Bert stood. “Recharge it and put a spare or two in your pocket.”

  Jim muttered sourly and came to his feet. “I used to get special combat pay for this sort of thing,” he complained, heading for the arms cache.

  Bert looked at Jill.

  She licked her lower lip nervously and said, “You want me to be there?”

  He shook his head. “There’s probably going to be trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble… darling?”

  Jim looked over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows raised, but continued on his way.

  “I don’t really know,” Bert said, “but you don’t have to be there.” He headed for his study.

  Inside, he picked up his pill bottles and shook one out of each. He put the brown pill in his right hand jacket pocket, the green in his left, not really knowing why he was doing it.

  He went on back to the living room and said to Jim, “Kay, let’s go. I’d like to get the layout a little more, before the others arrive.”

  Jim said, “You think we can get in?”

  “Yes. If we have any trouble, the stink starts sooner than originally expected. From now on, we start throwing weight.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They had no difficulty in getting into the penthouse. Evidently Katz, or someone, had instructed the building’s computers to admit them. They were the first to arrive.

  Jim took his companion through the house.

  “See? Don’t you get the unlived-in atmosphere?”

  “Yes. I wonder in how many towns he has layouts like this.”

  Jim said, “Well, think about it. If he’s got even part of the dope in his head that you and Jill are supposed to wind up with, it wouldn’t be hard to make all the dough in the world doing just about anything he wanted to do.”

  Bert led the way back to the library and sat down before the phone screen. He put his Identity Card in the slot and said, “National Data Banks. Information. In what field did Professor Leonard Katz take his Nobel Prize?”

  “In Gerontology.”

  Bert Alshuler snapped off the set, and leaned back in his chair.

  Jim, who had stationed himself at the bar and was contemplating the bottles there, evidently hard put to decide with which to treat himself, said, “What in the devil is Gerontology?”

  “Stay away from that liquor, damn it. We can’t afford to be smashed. A gerontologist studies aging in man and how to avoid it. There hasn’t been a great deal published on the subject lately. At least, not much that’s been released through the news media.”

  Jim poured himself a snort of Metaxa and returned with it to a chair in the room’s center. He sprawled in it and looked at Bert critically. “You know, old buddy, this super-education bit is beginning to get to you. You used to talk like a guy, an old pro soldier. Now you’re beginning to sound like some stuffed shirt. Where’d you pick up that cultivated accent bit?”

  “Shut up,” Bert said sourly. “I’m trying to think.”

  The others came in a group. It seemed likely that Katz, Marsh and General Paul had met Kneedler in the lobby and he had, probably defiantly, told them that he had been invited to the showdown. At any rate, when they entered he made a point of staying away from the other three.

  Leonard Katz looked at Bert and Jim thoughtfully, Marsh in testy disgust. The general, as usual, was expressionless save for a quizzical quality in his eyes.

  “Shall we all get comfortable?” Professor Katz said. “The bar is over there, if anyone would like a drink. Captain Hawkins, I see you have already anticipated my invitation.”

  No one else was in the mood for refreshment.

  When they were seated, the Professor looked at Bert and lifted his eyebrows ruefully. “It is your turn, my dear Alshuler.”

  Bert said, “Your field is Gerontology, rather than the brain or education.”

  “I never claimed otherwise. I took a Nobel Prize in Gerontology. However, I am knowledgeable in various fields.”

  Marsh snorted humor, but no one looked at him.

  Assistant Professor Kenneth Kneedler blurted, “Why did you gunmen have me brought here?”

  Bert said, “You didn’t have to come if you didn’t want to. I doubt if you’re head man of your group, but you are the only one I know of and thought you’d want to be represented.” He looked back at Katz. “You have given us the impression that Jill Masterson and I were the only two students on this new educational project, that we were more or less pathfinders, that the techniques aren’t fully worked out. However, I find that the same experiment is taking place in various universities all over the world. And I suspect that in each case the situation is duplicated. That is, one man and one woman. And I also begin to suspect that they are thrown into each other’s company deliberately, under circumstances that could lead to their becoming more… friendly.”

  Jim stirred at that and scowled.

  Katz said, “You possibly misunderstood, Alshuler. We do not deny that the experiment is taking place in a good many universities.”

  “It’s gone beyond the need of more experimentation,” Kneedler blurted. “It should now be released to all.”

  The general said gruffly, “Which would lead to chaos. It is true that the process has been developed to the point where release of it is practical. But it should be confined to the elite, those who are in a position to utilize it intelligently. It is, obviously, not for every Tom, Dick and Harry.”

  Professor Katz held up a hand for silence. He said to Bert, “You’ve evidently been quite busy. What else do you think you have discovered?”

  “That you, yourself, have probably gone through the procedure. I doubt if you discovered it; probably many scientists were involved. But you were possibly the first guinea pig, not people like Jill and myself. I have also found that our Ability Quotients weren’t as high as you led us to believe. Both of us were rather far down the list.”

  Bert hesitated a minute, then looked at the general. “I think my first real clue came when I ran into a passage from G. R. Taylor in a paper he did entitled New Minds For Old. I think I can recite it. There is… the danger of creating an elite group, all the more dangerous socially because it will be genuinely an elite. Those who have been operated upon… may well feel a genuine kinship with other super-brains, and as a group the super-brains may tend to work for their own preferential treatment, even if they do not actually seek to take over the reins of power. There is the possibility that such an elite, having assumed power, should deny the treatment which produces intelligence to any but a minority, perhaps their own offspring, thus perpetuating a two-caste society… Even if we do not push the prediction to these extremes, we can see that the possibility of a have and a have-not group, intellectually speaking, in society is a real one.’ ”

  He looked at General Paul. “That brought you to mind, General, and what you said about rule by an elite.”

  “It’s the only kind of rule that makes sense,” the general said flatly. “A true elite. Today, the United States of the Americas. Tomorrow the world.”

  “No!” Kneedler shouted. “It should be released democratically, to all!”

  The general snorted contempt. “Nine-te
nths and more of the common people neither could handle nor would want an I.Q. of 400 and an education far and beyond anything available today.”

  Bert said to the general, “You’re right, of course. The elite should rule—I prefer the term ‘lead,’ in this present age. However, the question becomes, who are the elite? And it arises with each new generation. When man was under tribal society, the council of chiefs, elected from each clan, were the elite, and led the tribe. But the thing is, the moment they stopped being the best men to lead, they were no longer the elite and steps had to be taken to remove them from their positions. The same applied when kings and high priests ruled. As soon as they were no longer the best men, no longer the true elite, then they had to be overthrown, or society was in chaos. The same with feudalism. As long as the aristocrats were really aristocrats they could be, and should have been, tolerated, but as soon as they deteriorated, it was time for the revolt on the part of those who were really suited to rule, or lead.”

  “What in the name of Cain are you driving at?” the general demanded.

  “You obviously represent a group that think of themselves as the nation’s elite, born to command. But I wonder, particularly in view of what I know about your own abilities… and ambitions. Certainly, if you got your hands on this technique and could utilize it yourselves and prevent anyone else from doing so, you would become our ruling class and could maintain yourselves in that position indefinitely. No thanks, General.”

  “Why, you ass! Don’t you see that you, yourself, are in on the ground floor of this? You would be one of us!”

  Bert looked at him with disgust. ” I did not ask to be. I had most of my driving ambition burned out of me back when I was heading the Elite Service. Since then I’m a little philosophical about elites.”

  “Holy smokes,” Jim muttered, unwinding himself to his feet. “My old buddy sure does talk pretty these days.” He repaired to the bar, poured himself another, and leaned there.

  Bert ignored him and turned back to Professor Katz. “And where do you stand, Professor? Whom do you back? Kneedler’s group, which wants to release your new mind expanding and teaching techniques to everyone, or the general’s, which wants a small minority to have it so that they can dominate the country, and ultimately the world?”

  The professor smiled his rueful smile. “You have presented the case very neatly, my dear Alshuler. Very well, I will tell you. Neither.”

  All eyes were on him.

  Katz leaned forward, the tips of his finger together. “I am afraid that with the exception of Professor Marsh here, one of our inner circle, none of you have seen quite all of the cards.”

  The general snapped, “What does that mean, Katz?”

  Leonard Katz ignored him and continued to speak to Bert. “You are mistaken in one thing. About your Ability Quotient and the other requirements you fulfilled before you were selected. You quoted very neatly from G. R. Taylor and I am gratified to see how quickly you are developing an all but photographic memory. However, you should also become aware of the work of the French statesman of science, Pierre Auger, who at about the same time asked whether there are some operations beyond the capacity of the human brain as we know it. It may equally be asked whether an enlarged brain might not carry man above some threshold as yet uncrossed. When the brain became large enough and complex enough to encompass speech, man separated from the animals. Men with still better brains might have capacities which we cannot even envisage and as such would constitute a different species, even a different order of beings from ourselves.” He hesitated.

  Bert said, “Kay. Follow through. You have the rostrum, Professor.”

  “Very well. In actuality, you have most of the picture already, my dear Alshuler. The general is quite right when he states that not every Tom, Dick and Harry are equipped to handle an I.Q. of 400, nor a truly universal education.”

  “That is correct,” the general snorted.

  Professor Leonard Katz looked at him. “Neither is the general, nor the group he represents.”

  “What!”

  Kneedler insisted, “It belongs to all of the people!”

  Bert said coldly, “And why should you and I be exceptions, Katz?”

  “We aren’t.”

  Silence fell.

  The professor said, and there was a sad tone in his voice, “Gentlemen, we are to be the first species that ever presided over its own extinction. And that is the ultimate raison d’etre of this project.”

  “Holy smokes,” Jim said, from the bar.

  “Shut up, Jim,” Bert Alshuler growled. “Begin making sense, Professor.”

  The professor said, “The human race was not… ah… designed for an I.Q. of 400 nor a really universal mind. I am sorry, perhaps, but it was not. Even in our world today a man with an abnormally high I.Q. is often not a happy man, any more than a moron is happy. He is often a misfit. The argument can be made that if everyone, almost overnight, was bounced up four hundred percent in I.Q. that there would be no basic difference. But no. We are animals who issued forth from our caves, or down from the trees, but a few thousand years ago. Indeed, in some remote areas of our planet, we are still in them. Neolithic society to this day remains on Earth in some places. A few thousand years is no span at all, in nature. We are animals with all of our original instincts. We are unfitted for the godhead.

  “In the past century we have had an information explosion as it is sometimes called. It accelerates. Robert Oppenheimer, back in the 1950s, pointed out that human knowledge was doubling every eight years. To what do we devote it? Look at what we are doing to our world. We are destroying its resources, we are polluting it, we are devoting our energies to greater and greater means of destruction. What do we do with what intelligence we have; what do we do with the information we have accumulated? What would man, as he is, do with four times as much intelligence and soon a hundredfold as much information? I am not optimistic, gentlemen.”

  Kneedler said, “But… but…”

  Katz shrugged unhappily. “Obviously, we will all live our lives out. However, super-intelligence and ultra-knowledge is not for such as we.”

  The general said abruptly, “You’ve gone around the bend. You’ve never talked this way before.”

  “No. Of course not. Not to you, Bugs.”

  “Bugs!”

  Katz looked at Bert and Jim. “Isn’t that what the military people called him?”

  Bert laughed. “Yes,” he said. “He bugged everybody.”

  Leonard Katz nodded and went on. “You must understand, my dear Alshuler, that the biological explosion did not take place in the field of neuro-physiology alone but in practically every branch of the science, including my own, Gerontology. In the past it had been tacitly assumed that the degenerative changes occurring in the aging human being and animal are natural processes, yet when we looked for the evidence we found that it did not exist. Research in the past couple of decades has, to the contrary, shown that the degeneration is associated with identifiable extraneous causes which we are now capable of erasing.”

  “What in the name of Cain are you talking about?” the general demanded.

  Bert looked over at him. “He’s saying that they can prolong life—indefinitely, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” the professor said. “And we have come to the conclusion—I and my colleagues—that it is just as well that the process must be begun before the birth of the child,” He looked to Bert ruefully. “Your children, and those of Miss Masterson will never die, Alshuler, except through accident, or possibly suicide.”

  The silence in the room could have been cut with a knife.

  The professor sighed and went on. “It was fortuitous that the two breakthroughs came almost simultaneously. Our race as it is could never have handled either an all but unlimited I.Q. nor could it have handled immortality. I leave it to your imagination the effect of the latter on the population explosion. So our project involved the selecting of our very highest Ability Quotie
nt young people to be the parents of the new race. We sought not only I.Q. but all the other factors needed to breed the super-race, including superb health.”

  Bert said slowly, “But what is the need of this ultimate education you are giving us?”

  “The great need is that the new race have as beneficial an environment in which to be raised as possible. Your children, by the time they have reached maturity, will be far and beyond you, Alshuler. But compared to the rest of us here, they will be as gods and we Neanderthals.”

  Bert stood and rammed his hands in his jacket pockets and began to pace in agitated thought.

  The general stood too.

  He said, “No.”

  All eyes turned to him. “I have no intention of standing by while a group of double-domed scientists reads the human race out of existence. My group is going to take over this whole project. We’ll suppress this immortality nonsense. And we’ll take over the new perception increasing techniques and the speeded up education. Later on, possibly, there’ll be more breakthroughs in Gerontology and we’ll be able to extend prolonged life to our elite, even though we’re adults.”

  It was Kneedler’s turn to stand. He shook his head at the general.

  “No. I, at least, am convinced that Professor Katz is correct. And I’ll make every effort, though my group, to support him. And every effort to hinder anything you attempt, General Paul.”

  For once, there was expression on the general’s face. It was fury.

  He snapped, “Captain!”

  In a flow of motion, there was a laser pistol in Jim Hawkin’s hand and its beam reached out. Assistant Professor Kenneth Kneedler crumbled forward to the floor.

  Bert yelled, “Jim!”

  The other directed the pistol at Bert Alshuler. Jim said, “Easy, old buddy. There’ve been some changes.” Bert Alshuler’s face was sick. “What was it? Jill?” Jim grinned at him. “That was just part of it, old buddy. I’ve been fed up for a long time with playing second fiddle to a chump like you and being told to shut up. When the general gave me the chance of taking over your position in the project, I figured at long last my licks had arrived.”