The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Stevens opened his mouth, closed it again, and realized that it had to be seen to be believed. “Say, could you come with me to the main lab? I’ve got something to show you.”

  “Certainly.”

  Gleason was not as perturbed by the squirming metal rods as Stevens had been. He was surprised, but not upset. The truth of the matter is that he lacked the necessary technical background to receive the full emotional impact of the inescapable implications of the phenomenon. “That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

  “Unusual! Look, chief, if the sun rose in the west, what would you think?”

  “I think I would call the observatory and ask them why.”

  “Well, all I can say is that I would a whole lot rather that the sun rose in the west than to have this happen.”

  “I admit it is pretty disconcerting,” Gleason agreed. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen anything like it. What is Dr. Rambeau’s opinion?”

  “He hasn’t seen it.”

  “Then perhaps we had better send for him. He may not have gone home for the night as yet.”

  “Why not show it to Waldo instead?”

  “We will. But Dr. Rambeau is entitled to see it first. After all, it’s his bailiwick, and I’m afraid the poor fellow’s nose is pretty well out of joint as it is. I don’t want to go over his head.”

  Stevens felt a sudden flood of intuition. “Just a second, chief. You’re right, but if it’s all the same to you I would rather that you showed it to him than for me to do it.”

  “Why so, Jimmie? You can explain it to him.”

  “I can’t explain a damn thing to him I haven’t already told you. And for the next few hours I’m going to be very, very busy indeed.”

  Gleason looked him over, shrugged his shoulders, and said mildly, “Very well, Jim, if you prefer it that way.”

  WALDO WAS QUITE BUSY, AND therefore happy. He would never have admitted—he did not admit even to himself, that there were certain drawbacks to his self-imposed withdrawal from the world and that chief among these was boredom. He had never had much opportunity to enjoy the time-consuming delights of social intercourse; he honestly believed that the smooth apes had nothing to offer him in the way of companionship. Nevertheless, the pleasure of the solitary intellectual life can pall.

  He repeatedly urged Uncle Gus to make his permanent home in Freehold, but he told himself that it was a desire to take care of the old man which motivated him. True—he enjoyed arguing with Grimes, but he was not aware how much those arguments meant to him. The truth of the matter was that Grimes was the only one of the human race who treated him entirely as another human and an equal—and Waldo wallowed in it, completely unconscious that the pleasure he felt in the old man’s company was the commonest and most precious of all human pleasures.

  But at present he was happy in the only way he knew how to be happy—working.

  There were two problems: that of Stevens and that of Grimes. Required: a single solution which would satisfy each of them. There were three stages to each problem; first, to satisfy himself that the problems really did exist, that the situations were in fact as they had been reported to him verbally; second, to undertake such research as the preliminary data suggested; and third, when he felt that his data was complete, to invent a solution.

  “Invent,” not “find.” Dr. Rambeau might have said “find,” or “search for.” To Rambeau the universe was inexorably ordered cosmos, ruled by unvarying law. To Waldo the universe was the enemy, which he strove to force to submit to his will. They might have been speaking of the same thing, but their approaches were different.

  There was much to be done. Stevens had supplied him with a mass of data, both on the theoretical nature of the radiated power system and the deKalb receptors which were the keystone of the system, and also on the various cases of erratic performance of which they had lately been guilty. Waldo had not given serious attention to power radiation up to this time, simply because he had not needed to. He found it interesting but comparatively simple. Several improvements suggested themselves to his mind. That standing wave, for example, which was the main factor in the coaxial beam—the efficiency of reception could be increased considerably by sending a message back over it which would automatically correct the aiming of the beam. Power delivery to moving vehicles could be made nearly as efficient as the power reception to stationary receivers.

  Not that such an idea was important at present. Later, when he had solved the problem at hand, he intended to make NAPA pay through the nose for the idea; or perhaps it would be more amusing to compete with them. He wondered when their basic patents ran out—must look it up.

  Despite inefficiencies the deKalb receptors should work every time, all the time, without failure. He went happily about finding out why they did not.

  He had suspected some obvious—obvious to him—defect in manufacture. But the inoperative deKalbs which Stevens had delivered to him refused to give up their secret. He X-rayed them, measured them with micrometer and interferometer, subjected them to all the usual tests and some that were quite unusual and peculiarly Waldoish. They would not perform.

  He built a deKalb in his shop, using one of the inoperative ones as a model and using the reworked metal of another of the same design, also inoperative, as the raw material. He used his finest scanners to see with and his smallest waldoes—tiny pixy hands, an inch across—for manipulation in the final stages. He created a deKalb which was as nearly identical with its model as technology and incredible skill could produce.

  It worked beautifully.

  Its elder twin still refused to work. He was not discouraged by this. On the contrary, he was elated. He had proved, proved with certainty, that the failure of the deKalbs was not a failure of workmanship, but a basic failure in theory. The problem was real.

  Stevens had reported to him the scandalous performance of the deKalbs in McLeod’s skycar, but he had not yet given his attention to the matter. Presently, in proper order, when he got around to it, he would look into the matter. In the meantime he tabled the matter. The smooth apes were an hysterical lot; there was probably nothing to the story. Writhing like Medusa’s locks, indeed!

  He gave fully half his time to Grimes’s problem.

  He was forced to admit that the biological sciences—if you could call them science!—were more fascinating than he had thought. He had shunned them, more or less; the failure of expensive “experts” to do anything for his condition when he was a child had made him contemptuous of such studies. Old wives’ nostrums dressed up in fancy terminology! Grimes he liked and even respected, but Grimes was a special case.

  Grimes’s data had convinced Waldo that the old man had a case. Why, this was serious! The figures were incomplete, but nevertheless convincing. The curve of the third decrement, extrapolated not too unreasonably, indicated that in twenty years there would not be a man left with strength enough to work in heavy industries. Button pushing would be all they would be good for.

  It did not occur to him that all he was good for was button pushing; he regarded weakness in the smooth apes as an old-style farmer might regard weakness in a draft animal. The farmer did not expect to pull the plow—that was the horse’s job.

  Grimes’s medical colleagues must be utter fools.

  Nevertheless, he sent for the best physiologists, neurologists, brain surgeons, and anatomists he could locate, ordering them as one might order goods from a catalogue. He must understand this matter.

  He was considerably annoyed when he found that he could not make arrangements, by any means, to perform vivisection on human beings. He was convinced by this time that the damage done by ultra short-wave radiation was damage to the neurological system, and that the whole matter should be treated from the standpoint of electromagnetic theory. He wanted to perform certain delicate manipulations in which human beings would be hooked up directly to apparatus of his own design to find out in what manner nerve impulses differed from elec
trical current. He felt that if he could disconnect portions of a man’s nervous circuit, replace it in part with electrical hookups, and examine the whole matter in situ, he might make illuminating discoveries. True, the man might not be much use to himself afterward.

  But the authorities were stuffy about it; he was forced to content himself with cadavers and with animals.

  Nevertheless, he made progress. Extreme short-wave radiation had a definite effect on the nervous system—a double effect: it produced “ghost” pulsations in the neurons, insufficient to accomplish muscular motor response, but, he suspected, strong enough to keep the body in a continual state of inhibited nervous excitation; and, secondly, a living specimen which had been subjected to this process for any length of time showed a definite, small but measurable, lowering in the efficiency of its neural impulses. If it had been an electrical circuit, he would have described the second effect as a decrease in insulating efficiency.

  The sum of these two effects on the subject individual was a condition of mild tiredness, somewhat similar to the malaise of the early stages of pulmonary tuberculosis. The victim did not feel sick; he simply lacked pep. Strenuous bodily activity was nor impossible; it was simply distasteful; it required too much effort, too much will power.

  But an orthodox pathologist would have been forced to report that the victim was in perfect health—a little run-down, perhaps, but nothing wrong with him. Too sedentary a life, probably. What he needed was fresh air, sunshine, and healthy exercise.

  Doc Grimes alone had guessed that the present, general, marked preference for a sedentary life was the effect and not the cause of the prevailing lack of vigor. The change had been slow, at least as slow as the increase in radiation in the air. The individuals concerned had noticed it, if at all, simply as an indication that they were growing a little bit older, “slowing down, not so young as I used to be.” And they were content to slow down; it was more comfortable than exertion.

  Grimes had first begun to be concerned about it when he began to notice that all of his younger patients were “the bookish type.” It was all very well for a kid to like to read books, he felt, but a normal boy ought to be out doing a little hell raising too. What had become of the sand-lot football games, the games of scrub, the clothes-tearing activity that had characterized his own boyhood?

  Damn it, a kid ought not to spend all his time poring over a stamp collection.

  Waldo was beginning to find the answer.

  The nerve network of the body was not dissimilar to antennae. Like antennae, it could and did pick up electromagnetic waves. But the pickup was evidenced not as induced electrical current, but as nerve pulsation—impulses which were maddeningly similar to, but distinctly different from, electrical current. Electromotive force could be used in place of nerve impulses, to activate muscle tissue, but e.m.f. was not nerve impulse. For one thing they traveled at vastly different rates of speed. Electrical current travels at a speed approaching that of light; neural impulse is measured in feet per second.

  Waldo felt that somewhere in this matter of speed lay the key to the problem.

  He was not permitted to ignore the matter of McLeod’s fantastic skycar as long as he had intended to. Dr. Rambeau called him up. Waldo accepted the call, since it was routed from the laboratories of NAPA. “Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded of the image.

  Rambeau looked around cautiously. “Sssh! Not so loud,” he whispered. “They might be listening.”

  “Who might be? And who are you?”

  “‘They’ are the ones who are doing it. Lock your doors at night. I’m Dr. Rambeau.”

  “Dr. Rambeau? Oh yes. Well, Doctor, what is the meaning of this intrusion?”

  The doctor leaned forward until he appeared about to fall out of the stereo picture. “I’ve learned how to do it,” he said tensely.

  “How to do what?”

  “Make the deKalbs work. The dear, dear deKalbs.” He suddenly thrust his hands at Waldo, while clutching frantically with his fingers. “They go like this: Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!”

  Waldo felt a normal impulse to cut the man off, but it was overruled by a fascination as to what he would say next. Rambeau continued. “Do you know why? Do you? Riddle me that.”

  “Why?”

  Rambeau placed a finger beside his nose and smiled roguishly. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Wouldn’t you give a pretty to know? But I’ll tell you!”

  “Tell me, then.”

  Rambeau suddenly looked terrified. “Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps they are listening. But I will, I will! Listen carefully: Nothing is certain.”

  “Is that all?” inquired Waldo, now definitely amused by the man’s antics.

  “‘Is that all?’ Isn’t that enough? Hens will crow and cocks will lay. You are here and I am there. Or maybe not. Nothing is certain. Nothing, nothing, NOTHING is certain! Around and around the little ball goes, and where it stops nobody knows. Only I’ve learned how to do it.”

  “How to do what?”

  “How to make the little ball stop where I want it to. Look.” He whipped out a penknife. “When you cut yourself, you bleed, don’t you? Or do you?” He sliced at the forefinger of his left hand. “See?” He held the finger close to the pickup; the cut, though deep, was barely discernible and it was bleeding not at all.

  Capital! thought Waldo. Hysteric vascular control—a perfect clinical case. “Anybody can do that,” he said aloud. “Show me a hard one.”

  “Anybody? Certainly anybody can—if they know how. Try this one.” He jabbed the point of the penknife straight into the palm of his left hand, so that it stuck out the back of his hand. He wiggled the blade in the wound, withdrew it, and displayed the palm. No blood, and the incision was closing rapidly. “Do you know why? The knife is only probably there, and I’ve found the improbability!”

  Amusing as it had been, Waldo was beginning to be bored by it. “Is that all?”

  “There is no end to it,” pronounced Rambeau, “for nothing is certain any more. Watch this.” He held the knife flat on his palm, then turned his hand over.

  The knife did not fall, but remained in contact with the underside of his hand.

  Waldo was suddenly attentive. It might be a trick; it probably was a trick—but it impressed him more, much more, than Rambeau’s failure to bleed when cut. One was common to certain types of psychosis; the other should not have happened. He cut in another viewphone circuit. “Get me Chief Engineer Stevens at North American Power-Air,” he said sharply. “At once!”

  Rambeau paid no attention, but continued to speak of the penknife. “It does not know which way is down,” he crooned, “for nothing is certain any more. Maybe it will fall—maybe not. I think it will. There—it has. Would you like to see me walk on the ceiling?”

  “You called me, Mr. Jones?” It was Stevens.

  Waldo cut his audio circuit to Rambeau. “Yes. That jumping jack, Rambeau. Catch him and bring him to me at once. I want to see him.”

  “But Mr. Jo—”

  “Move!” He cut Stevens off, and renewed the audio to Rambeau.

  “—uncertainty. Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world!” Rambeau looked vaguely at Waldo, brightened, and added, “Good day, Mr. Jones. Thank you for calling.”

  The screen went dead.

  Waldo waited impatiently. The whole thing had been a hoax, he told himself. Rambeau had played a gigantic practical joke. Waldo disliked practical jokes. He put in another call for Stevens and left it in.

  When Stevens did call back his hair was mussed and his face was red. “We had a bad time of it,” he said.

  “Did you get him?”

  “Rambeau? Yes, finally.”

  “Then bring him up.”

  “To Freehold? But that’s impossible. You don’t understand. He’s blown his top; he’s crazy. They’ve taken him away to a hospital.”

  “You assume too much,” Waldo said icily. “I know he’s crazy, but I meant what I said. Arrange
it. Provide nurses. Sign affidavits. Use bribery. Bring him to me at once. It is necessary.”

  “You really mean that?”

  “I’m not in the habit of jesting.”

  “Something to do with your investigations? He’s in no shape to be useful to you, I can tell you that.”

  “That,” pronounced Waldo, “is for me to decide.”

  “Well,” said Stevens doubtfully, “I’ll try.”

  “See that you succeed.”

  Stevens called back thirty minutes later. “I can’t bring Rambeau.”

  “You clumsy incompetent.”

  Stevens turned red, but held his temper. “Never mind the personalities. He’s gone. He never got to the hospital.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the crazy part about it. They took him away in a confining stretcher, laced up like a corset. I saw them fasten him in myself. But when they got there he was gone. And the attendants claim the straps weren’t even unbuckled.”

  Waldo started to say, “Preposterous,” thought better of it. Stevens went on.

  “But that’s not the half of it. I’d sure like to talk to him myself. I’ve been looking around his lab. You know that set of deKalbs that went nuts—the ones that were hexed?”

  “I know to what you refer.”

  “Rambeau’s got a second set to doing the same thing!”

  Waldo remained silent for several seconds, then said quietly, “Dr. Stevens—”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to thank you for your efforts. And will you please have both sets of receptors, the two sets that are misbehaving, sent to Freehold at once?”

  There was no doubt about it. Once he had seen them with his own eyes, watched the inexplicable squirming of the antennae, applied such tests as suggested themselves to his mind, Waldo was forced to conclude that he was faced with new phenomena, phenomena for which he did not know the rules.

  If there were rules…

  For he was honest with himself. If he saw what he thought he saw, then rules were being broken by the new phenomena, rules which he had considered valid, rules to which he had never previously encountered exceptions. He admitted to himself that the original failures of the deKalbs should have been considered just as overwhelmingly upsetting to physical law as the unique behavior of these two; the difference lay in that one alien phenomenon was spectacular, the other was not.