Kampus

by James Gunn

  “Coordinate?” Elaine asked.

  “Interrogator-responder. Our computer can ask but cannot be questioned.”

  “You mean,” Gavin said, “you can spy on anything going on anywhere without revealing your presence?”

  “Yes,” the computer scientist said. “It keeps us in touch, and our computer calls our attention to anything worth noticing.”

  “And then what do you do?” Gavin asked.

  “That's up to the Director,” the computer scientist said. “Mostly we just observe. Here's the Director now. You might ask him.”

  Gavin turned, to see a section of the wall open. Out of a small elevator stepped a short, plump man with a rosy, cherubic face and a bald head framed by wild white hair. He beamed at everyone as he passed, but he made his way directly toward Gavin and Elaine.

  He paused in front of them and held out a hand to each. “Welcome!” he said. “Welcome to the enchanted mountain!”

  “Thank you,” Elaine said. “It's magnificent.”

  “We have a few questions,” Gavin said.

  “Of course,” the Director said. “And they will be answered. In time. But now it is time for dinner.”

  The dining hall looked like a sixteenth-century monastery refectory. Gavin walked on travertine floors and stared at the choir stalls against the wall and the ancient tapestries above them, and the carved wooden ceiling above all. A fire burned in the French Gothic fireplace, and a buffet was laid out in sterling-silver serving dishes on old dark wooden sideboards. Massive candelabra, also apparently made of silver, stood on the floor and on the sideboards and on the scarred monastic dining tables that ranged nearly the length of the two-story room.

  The monks should have enjoyed such splendor and such food. Even if the food was cooked by computer, it was cooked by a computer that had digested the recipes of Cordon Bleu. The meal was accompanied by good wine, good coffee, and the most brilliant conversation Gavin had ever heard.

  But there were no answers to his most pressing questions, and he returned with Elaine to their rooms in the guesthouse, his head bubbling with ideas about the universe from the infinitesimal to the infinite. No one, however, had wanted to talk about what was expected of them or what was going to be done with them.

  They went to bed, as always, alone.

  The next day they explored the vast laboratories that burrowed beneath the enchanted mountain. Much more existed below the surface, and was, in its way, even more incredible. The biologist, as he had promised, escorted Gavin and Elaine on a guided tour, down an elevator located on the first floor of the big house, and then through tunnels carved interminably through igneous rock and even into granite.

  Through dark goggles they watched a laser about the size of a thirty-five-millimeter motion-picture projector evaporate rock at the rate of three cubic meters a minute.

  “I've never even heard of anything like this,” Gavin said.

  “That's because there isn't anything like it anywhere else,” their guide said.

  “Why not?” Gavin asked.

  “The Director hasn't decided yet whether to release it.”

  The laboratories were only larger corridors carved at right angles to the passageways, and, like them, the laboratories had walls of laser-polished rock. But their equipment was extraordinary, and, to Gavin's untrained eye, unique. Much of it was unique, their guide said; one-of-a-kind machinery was no more expensive than that which was mass-produced. All it required was a program for the computer.

  In one laboratory they saw what their guide called rather routine experiments in cryogenics and the odd behavior of liquids and solids at near absolute zero, as well as some attempts to freeze and restore living tissue. In another laboratory they witnessed a breakthrough in superconductivity at room temperatures.

  At the end of a long reddish corridor, new antibiotics were being created, molecule by molecule; nearby, work was moving forward on chemical treatment for mental illness, on lengthening the life span, on synthetic food, on improved fertility depressants, and on improvement of the process for coding information into chemicals.

  “We're far beyond the chemical-learning pills now in general use,” their guide commented. “Those are little more than placebos, you know.”

  Gavin hadn't known that, and a terrible thought occurred to him that he did not voice. “Why don't you release these?” Gavin asked. “They'd be a real boon to students.”

  “That's up to the Director,” the biologist said.

  In another laboratory they watched biofeedback experiments with extrasensory phenomena. One young man had just experienced an astonishing run with dice, but their guide thought it was merely one of those inexplicable operations of chance and that the experiments would not come up with anything in the end.

  “Then why are they continued?” Gavin asked.

  “The person in charge of them thinks they are worth his time,” their guide explained.

  In a physics laboratory they saw the results of particle accelerator tests—the accelerators themselves were buried deep beneath another mountain—and the theoretical configuration of a hydrogen ramjet interstellar ship that could reach speeds of nine-tenths the speed of light. Given the desire and the resources, travel to another star was feasible.

  Over coffee they heard discussion about obtaining the resources from Jupiter. The colony on the moon, they learned, already was self-supporting, and the colonies on Mars had learned what self-sufficiency would involve. These, of course, were not institute projects, but the institute had observers present and felt a sense of commitment to colonization. The terraforming of Venus had been started with the release in the atmosphere of free-floating, tailored diatoms.

  Surprising new astronomical information was being received from a giant telescope built on a nearby peak—a black hole had been identified after its location was calculated from the behavior of a companion sun, and nearby stars with planetary systems had been observed. The new radio telescope in space—a gigantic web of cables—was relaying valuable new information about the distant reaches of the universe, and time had been allocated for picking up possible messages from other worlds.

  In an engineering section they saw demonstrations of materials whose strength approached their theoretical limits, avoidance mechanisms for vehicles, voice-actuated typewriters, computer-human interfaces, and a dozen other amazing gadgets and appliances which, Gavin learned, probably would be released for licensing.

  “Even though we have all the power we need and extensive manufacturing facilities of our own,” their guide said, “we still have major expenses, particularly for art and books, which a purchasing committee continues to buy when anything valuable comes on the market.”

  “One would think you were preparing for a cataclysm or a holocaust,” Elaine said.

  The biologist smiled at her. “In general, we are optimistic, but we must discount the normal optimism associated with our kind of work. So we protect ourselves and plan to preserve what we can of the human inheritance. Already we have the largest library in the world, not to mention the capacity of our computer to reprint any book recorded anywhere. What is just as important, we have a magnificent retrieval system.”

  Their guide had saved his work until last. They looked into microscopes to see cells budding and into vats to see limbs and organs floating like refuse from a charnel house. Elaine shuddered, and Gavin wondered darkly if that was where uninvited guests concluded their stay.

  “We've had some luck with limb transplants on animals,” the biologist said. “We are able, you see, to grow limbs from their own cells. But so far we've been unable to get the organs to function properly. We're about to release what we know to hospitals across the country where there is plentiful human clinical material. We've been unable to do that sort of thing here; we've had no one needing transplants.”

  In the days that followed, Gavin explored the grounds and the big house. Each had its delights and surprises. Later his days settled into rout
ine. He would rise early—he had never before awakened early by choice—and after bathing and dressing, he would wander to the morning room in the big house. The bright marble room with its carved fireplace and its sixteenth-century Spanish ceiling received the light of the morning sun as it peered over the crater rim. Gavin would sit in a large easy chair sipping coffee, usually with a few other early risers, while they waited for breakfast to be laid out in the dining hall.

  After breakfast he usually wandered upstairs to the library, where he would browse through the ten thousand rare volumes shelved along the walls in glass-covered wooden shelves, and read them beneath the carved ceiling. Or he would follow a line of momentary interest deep into the computer catalog and call for books which would be delivered immediately by dumbwaiter from the endless stacks carved out of the hill beneath the mansion.

  In the afternoon he would swim. Sometimes Elaine would join him. Sometimes others would be there, too.

  Days passed unhurried and unnoticed. Except when Gavin saw Elaine at the pool, he scarcely saw her at all. She had her own routine, into which he did not inquire. They usually went over to dinner together, but they did not talk much, and when they arrived at the congregation hall, they parted and spoke to others. Gavin felt that the strange bond that had held them together was dying, if it was not already dead.

  In spite of his uneasiness at the ways in which the crater walls seemed like prison walls, and his inability to get answers to his questions, Gavin would have been content to wander for years through this enchanted place with its enchanted people, but nightmares began to trouble his sleep. Dreams of Jenny alternated with dreams of Elaine; sometimes they were together in one dream, and sometimes together in one woman. He dreamed, too, about the Professor, and occasionally about Gregory and the Iron Chancellor and Willie and StudEx. And once or twice he dreamed about Berkeley and the West Coast.

  One afternoon he came upon Elaine splashing and laughing in the pool with Jackson, who was even better-looking with his clothes removed. He stood watching them for a few minutes before he turned away. That evening he told Jackson he wished to speak to the Director.

  “Of course,” Jackson said. “He's with us almost every evening.”

  “I want to speak to him alone.”

  Jackson sighed. “He's very busy, you know.”

  “It's important.”

  “I'll see what I can do.”

  Two days later, in the late afternoon, Jackson came for him and led him to the third floor of the big house. Gavin had never been there before. Jackson ushered Gavin through a big carved doorway into a Gothic room and then withdrew. Gavin stood in the doorway looking at the room. Intricately carved wooden arches rose to a Spanish ceiling. Books were shelved against the walls behind leaded-glass fronts. A massive old table, flanked by antique chairs, extended down the center of the room toward a towering Gothic fireplace at the far end of the room.

  The Director was seated at an antique desk made of dark wood and inlaid with tooled leather. He had a stack of papers in front or him; he went through them rapidly, making notations on them with a pen. Finally he looked up.

  “Come in, Gavin,” he said.

  Gavin stepped forward hesitantly. He felt he was in the presence of something extraordinary, that the Director was something more than an older man with a pudgy body and a bald head.

  “Sit down,” the Director said, indicating an old chair opposite the desk. “I've been wanting to talk to you.”

  “I want to leave this place,” Gavin said abruptly.

  “We're sorry to hear that,” the Director said. The wild white hair around his ears seemed wilder than ever. “But of course you're free to leave anytime.”

  Gavin sat down. “Why didn't anybody tell me that earlier?”

  “I can only speculate,” the Director said, “but possibly they hoped you would become happy enough here to forget your questions. We would like you to stay, you know. This is an invitation to join us if you wish.”

  “To join you?” Gavin repeated. “But I'm not a scientist.”

  “We're not all scientists here,” the Director said. “I'm only a layman myself, with a little knowledge about a great many things, and a great deal of knowledge about almost nothing.”

  “I'm just a student,” Gavin said. “I don't belong here.”

  “We're all students. That's all we want here—students. Nobody whose mind is made up—'used up’ may be a better description.”

  “I have nothing to contribute,” Gavin said.

  “Others think differently. You have impressed a number of our people; they think you will develop into a scholar and a creative human being.”

  “I'm unworthy.”

  The Director looked around him at the Gothic splendor. “We're all unworthy.”

  “You don't understand,” Gavin said. It was a moment of confession, as inevitable as the coming of night, and yet it did not come easy. “I did a very bad thing once.”

  “We know.”

  “I killed someone, out of carelessness, out of greed. It was someone I liked a great deal...” Gavin broke off. “You know?”

  “As you must have been informed by now, our computer is in contact with all the other major computers in the world.”

  “And you learned it from one of them?”

  “All such information is recorded, and we like to know as much as possible about our guests and potential colleagues. We know about your Professor, and from your friend Elaine we think we know why you did what you did—a reprehensible act, a childish act of will and bravado, but an act those of us who seek knowledge can understand. It was an accident.”

  “There was more to it,” Gavin said.

  “I understand there was also an act of ritual cannibalism,” the Director said. He didn't smile, but there was on his face a look of absolution.

  Gavin had not thought for a long time about what he had done, about how it had been, and the memory was like a fist in his stomach.

  “An act of admiration,” the Director said. “An act of love.”

  “Yes.” Gavin felt a hollow within himself where someone else had been, where someone had lived with him. Professor! Where are you? There was no answer. The Professor was gone. It was as if the act of confession had released the Professor from a kind of bondage, or as if Gavin had been sick and now was well again. But Gavin felt alone now and afraid.

  “I'm glad you spoke of this yourself,” the Director said. Increasingly he seemed to Gavin like a confessor. “It is good for you to be free of this ancient guilt before you decide what you wish to do. Let me ask you again: will you join us?”

  He had been given a similar invitation by Sally, but her family was sick, and they wanted him to join the sickness. These people seemed well, and they wanted nothing of him but that he be well too. And yet..."It seems to me,” Gavin said, “that you have chosen to isolate yourself from the human struggle.”

  “We were driven here by events,” the Director said. He stood up and turned his back toward Gavin to look out a window toward the crater rim.

  “What events?”

  “The same events that turned the campuses over to the students drove the scientists and scholars from the universities. For centuries teaching and research had reinforced each other, but when hiring and firing of teachers became a student game, teaching became student-pleasing, a con game in which practical men and women sold students tricks and flattery. Oh, there were a few exceptions, like your Professor, who stayed on out of love and out of a disregard for pay or appreciation. The rest of those interested in the creation of new knowledge, in the exploration of the unknown, were neither welcome nor useful. Some of them went into other occupations. Many never discovered the delights of discovery. A few found their way into places like the enchanted mountain.”

  Gavin looked around the resplendent room. “There are other places like this?”

  The Director turned from the window and laughed.

  “Nothing quite like this, bu
t here and there a quiet place of thought and study and isolation from the mad currents of the world. A hidden valley in Tibet, an oasis in the Middle East, a mountaintop in Africa, a high plateau in South America, an island in the South Pacific. And more ordinary research institutes doing practical work in the outside world, with a wing for theoretical research and time for impractical studies.

  “After all, the individual is more free today to do whatever he wishes than he has ever been. Why shouldn't this be so for the serious student as well? Why shouldn't scholars and scientists be free to pursue their special interests as much as communes and group marriages and revolutionaries? The only thing that keeps them from exercising their new freedom is that their interests often require resources unavailable to the ordinary man. This is where the enchanted mountain is useful. It provides resources and solitude, the two essentials for intellectual discovery.”

  “It seems to me that your consumption of resources and your surreptitious use of privileged information makes the institute a conspiracy,” Gavin said. “Why doesn't the government act against you?”

  The Director nodded. “That's very good, Gavin. The fact is, however, that the institute is licensed to perform its functions—and, as a matter of economic truth, produces more resources than it consumes, not even counting the potential of its theoretical research. And we are privileged to obtain and use otherwise secret information.”

  “It's a poor license which has no inspection procedures,” Gavin said stubbornly, “and the governments of the world do not even know what you are or why you exist.”

  “No,” said the Director, “and we give them no reason for curiosity. But, since the conscious withdrawal of police power, governments are not what they used to be. And, like the civil authorities, we do not use against the individual any information we may gather. Everyone who knows of our presence here is free to come and go. It is not illegal to keep our existence as secret as possible, so long as we do not infringe on the liberties of others.” He sat down once more in the chair behind the desk.