by Isaac Asimov
'Oh, Roger,' whispered Jane.
'You think that's bad? The Dean called me into his office today. I'm to stop my parlour tricks, he says. It seems I had stumbled down the stairs and automatically levitated myself to safety. Morton says he wouldn't believe I could fly if he saw me in action. Seeing isn't believing in this case, he says, and orders me to take a rest. I'm not going back.'
'Roger,' said Jane, her eyes opening wide. 'Are you serious?'
'I can't go back. I'm sick of them. Scientists!'
'But what will you do?'
'I don't know.' Roger buried his head in his hands. He said in a muffled voice, 'You tell me, Jim. You're the psychiatrist. Why won't they believe me?'
'Perhaps it's a matter of self-protection, Roger,' said Sarle, slowly. 'People aren't happy with anything they can't understand. Even some centuries ago when many people did believe in the existence of extranatural abilities, like flying on broomsticks, for instance, it was almost always assumed that these powers originated with the forces of evil.
'People still think so. They may not believe literally in the devil, but they do think that what is strange is evil. They'll fight against believing in levitation - or be scared to death if the fact is forced down their throats. That's true, so let's face it.'
Roger shook his head. 'You're talking about people, and I'm talking about scientists.'
'Scientists are people.'
'You know what I mean. I have here a phenomenon. It isn't witchcraft. I haven't dealt with the devil. Jim, there must be a natural explanation. We don't know all there is to know about gravitation. We know hardly anything, really. Don't you suppose it's just barely conceivable that there is some biological method of nullifying gravity? Perhaps I am a mutation of some sort. I have a ... well, call it a muscle . . . which can abolish gravity. At least it can abolish the effect of gravity on myself. Well, let's investigate it. Why sit on our hands? If we have antigravity, imagine what it will mean to the human race.'
'Hold it, Rog,' said Sarle. 'Think about the matter a while. Why are you so unhappy about it? According to Jane, you were almost mad with fear the first day it happened, before you had any way of knowing that science was going to ignore you and that your superiors would be unsympathetic.'
'That's right,' murmured Jane.
Sarle said, 'Now why should that be? Here you had a great, new, wonderful power; a sudden freedom from the deadly pull of gravity.'
Roger said, 'Oh, don't be a fool. It was - horrible. I couldn't understand it. I still can't.'
'Exactly, my boy. It was something you couldn't understand and therefore something horrible. You're a physical scientist. You know what makes the Universe run. Or if you don't know, you know someone else knows. Even if no one understands a certain point, you know that some day someone will know. The key word is know. It's part of your life. Now you come face to face with a phenomenon which you consider to violate one of the basic laws of the Universe. Scientists say: Two masses will attract one another according to a fixed mathematical rule. It is an inalienable property of matter and space. There are no exceptions. And now you're an exception.'
Roger said, glumly, 'And how.'
'You see, Roger,' Sarle went on, 'for the first time in history, mankind really has what he considers unbreakable rules. I mean, unbreakable. In primitive cultures, a medicine man might use a spell to produce rain. If it didn't work, it didn't upset the validity of magic. It just meant that the shaman had neglected some part of his spell, or had broken a taboo, or offended a god. In modern theocratic cultures, the commandments of the Deity are unbreakable. Still if a man were to break the commandments and yet prosper, it would be no sign that that particular religion was invalid. The ways of Providence are admittedly mysterious and some invisible punishment awaits.
'Today, however, we have rules that really can't be broken, and one of them is the existence of gravity. It works even though the man who invokes it has forgotten to mutter em-em-over-ahr-square.'
Roger managed a twisted smile. 'You're all wrong, Jim. The unbreakable rules have been broken over and over again. Radioactivity was impossible when it was discovered. Energy came out of nowhere; incredible quantities of it. It was as ridiculous as levitation.'
'Radioactivity was an object phenomenon that could be communicated and duplicated. Uranium would fog photographic film for anyone. A Crookes tube could be built by anyone and would deliver an electron-stream in identical fashion for all. You--'
'I've tried communicating--'
'I know. But can you tell me, for instance, how I might levitate.'
'Of course not.'
'That limits others to observation only, without experimental duplication. It puts your levitation on the same plane with stellar evolution, something to theorize about but never experiment with.'
'Yet scientists are willing to devote their lives to astrophysics.'
'Scientists are people. They can't reach the stars, so they make the best of it. But they can reach you and to be unable to touch your levitation would be infuriating.'
'Jim, they haven't even tried. You talk as though I've been studied. Jim, they won't even consider the problem.'
'They don't have to. Your levitation is part of a whole class of phenomena that won't be considered. Telepathy, clairvoyance, pre-science and a thousand other extranatural powers are practically never seriously investigated, even though reported with every appearance of reliability. Rhine's experiments on ESP have annoyed far more scientists than they have intrigued. So you see, they don't have to study you to know they don't want to study you. They know that in advance.'
'Is this funny to you, Jim? Scientists refuse to investigate facts; they turn their back on the truth. And you just sit there and grin and make droll statements.'
'No, Roger, I know it's serious. And I have no glib explanations for mankind, really. I'm giving you my thoughts. It's what I think. But don't you see? What I'm doing, really, is to try to look at things as they are. It's what you must do. Forget your ideals, your theories, your notions as to what people ought to do. Consider what they are doing. Once a person is oriented to face facts rather than delusions, problems tend to disappear. At the very least, they fall into their true perspective and become soluble.'
Roger stirred restlessly. 'Psychiatric gobbledygook! It's like putting your fingers on a man's temple and saying, "Have faith and you will be cured!" If the poor sap isn't cured, it's because he didn't drum up enough faith. The witch doctor can't lose.'
'Maybe you're right, but let's see. What is your problem?'
'No catechism, please. You know my problem so let's not horse around.'
'You levitate. Is that it?'
'Let's say it is. It'll do as a first approximation.'
'You're not being serious, Roger, but actually you're probably right. It's only a first approximation. After all, you're tackling that problem. Jane tells me you've been experimenting.'
'Experimenting. Ye gods, Jim, I'm not experimenting. I'm drifting. I need high-powered brains and equipment. I need a research team and I don't have it.'
'Then what's your problem? Second approximation.'
Roger said, 'I see what you mean. My problem is to get a research team. But I've tried! Man, I've tried till I'm tired of trying.'
'How have you tried?'
'I've sent out letters. I've asked - oh, stop it, Jim. I haven't the heart to go through the patient-on-the-couch routine. You know what I've been doing.'
'I know that you've said to people, "I have a problem. Help me." Have you tried anything else?'
'Look, Jim. I'm dealing with mature scientists.'
'I know. So you reason that the straightforward request is sufficient. Again it's theory against fact. I've told you the difficulties involved in your request. When you thumb a ride on a highway you're making a straightforward request, but most cars pass you by just the same. The point is that the straightforward request has failed. Now what's your problem? Third approximation!'
<
br /> 'To find another approach which won't fail? Is that what you want me to say?'
'It's what you have said, isn't it?'
'So I know it without your telling me.'
'Do you? You're ready to quit school, quit your job, quit science. Where's your consistency, Rog? Do you abandon a problem when your first experiment fails? Do you give up when one theory is shown to be inadequate? The same philosophy of experimental science that holds for inanimate objects should hold for people as well.'
'All right. What do you suggest I try? Bribery? Threats? Tears?'
James Sarle stood up. 'Do you really want a suggestion?'
'Go ahead.'
'Do as Dr Morton said. Take a vacation and to hell with levitation. It's a problem for the future. Sleep in bed and float or don't float; what's the difference. Ignore levitation, laugh at it or even enjoy it. Do anything but worry about it, because it isn't your problem. That's the whole point. It's not your immediate problem. Spend your time considering how to make scientists study something they don't want to study. That is the immediate problem and that is exactly what you've spent no thinking time on as yet.'
Sarle walked to the hall closet and got his coat. Roger went with him. Minutes passed in silence.
Then Roger said without looking up, 'Maybe you're right, Jim.'
'Maybe I am. Try it and then tell me. Good-bye, Roger.'
Roger Toomey opened his eyes and blinked at the morning brightness of the bedroom. He called out, 'Hey, Jane, where are you?'
Jane's voice answered, 'In the kitchen. Where do you think?'
'Come in here, will you?'
She came in. 'The bacon won't fry itself, you know.'
'Listen, did I float last night?'
'I don't know. I slept.'
'You're a help.' He got out of bed and slipped his feet into his mules. 'Still, I don't think I did.'
'Do you think you've forgotten how?' There was sudden hope in her voice.
'I haven't forgotten. See!' He slid into the dining room on a cushion of air. 'I just have a feeling I haven't floated. I think it's three nights now.'
'Well, that's good,' said Jane. She was back at the stove. 'It's just that a month's rest has done you good. If I had called Jim in the beginning--'
'Oh, please, don't go through that. A month's rest, my eye. It's just that last Sunday I made up my mind what to do. Since then I've relaxed. That's all there is to it.'
'What are you going to do?'
'Every spring Northwestern Tech gives a series of seminars on physical topics. I'll attend.'
'You mean, go way out to Seattle.'
'Of course.'
'What will they be discussing?'
'What's the difference? I just want to see Linus Deering.'
'But he's the one who called you crazy, isn't he?'
'He did.' Roger scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs. 'But he's also the best man of the lot.'
He reached for the salt and lifted a few inches out of his chair as he did so. He paid no attention.
He said, 'I think maybe I can handle him.'
* * *
The spring seminars at Northwestern Tech had become a nationally know institution since Linus Deering had joined the faculty. He was the chairman and lent the proceedings their distinctive tone. He introduced the speakers, led the questioning periods, summed up at the close of each morning and afternoon session and was the soul of conviviality at the concluding dinner at the end of the week's work.
AH this Roger Toomey knew by report. He could now observe the actual workings of the man. Professor Deering was rather under middle height, was dark of complexion and had a luxuriant and quite distinctive mop of wavy brown hair. His wide, thin-lipped mouth when not engaged in active conversation looked perpetually on the point of a sly smile. He spoke quickly and fluently, without notes, and seemed always to deliver his comments from a level of superiority that his listeners automatically accepted.
At least, so he had been on the first morning of the seminar. It was only during the afternoon session that the listeners began to notice a certain hesitation in his remarks. Even more, there was an uneasiness about him as he sat on the stage during the delivery of the scheduled papers. Occasionally, he glanced furtively towards the rear of the auditorium.
Roger Toomey, seated in the very last row, observed all this tensely. His temporary glide towards normality that had begun when he first thought there might be a way out was beginning to recede.
On the Pullman to Seattle, he had not slept. He had had visions of himself lifting upwards in time to the wheel-clacking, of moving out quietly past the curtains and into the corridor, of being awakened into endless embarrassment by the hoarse shouting of a porter. So he had fastened the curtains with safety pins and had achieved nothing by that; no feeling of security; no sleep outside of a few exhausting snatches.
He had napped in his seat during the day, while the mountains slipped past outside, and arrived in Seattle in the evening with a stiff neck, aching bones, and a general sensation of despair.
He had made his decision to attend the seminar far too late to have been able to obtain a room to himself at the Institute's dormitories. Sharing a room was, of course, quite out of the question. He registered at a downtown hotel, locked the door, closed and locked all the windows, shoved his bed hard against the wall and the bureau against the open side of the bed; then slept.
He remembered no dreams, and when he awoke in the morning he was still lying within the manufactured enclosure. He felt relieved.
When he arrived, in good time, at Physics Hall on the Institute's campus, he found, as he expected, a large room and a small gathering. The seminar sessions were held, traditionally, over the Easter vacation and students were not in attendance. Some fifty physicists sat in an auditorium designed to hold four hundred, clustering on either side of the central aisle up near the podium.
Roger took his seat in the last row, where he would not be seen by casual passersby looking through the high, small windows of the auditorium door, and where the others in the audience would have had to twist through nearly a hundred eighty degrees to see him.
Except, of course, for the speaker on the platform - and for Professor Deering.
Roger did not hear much of the actual proceedings. He concentrated entirely on waiting for those moments when Deering was alone on the platform; when only Deering could see him.
As Deering grew obviously more disturbed, Roger grew bolder. During the final summing up of the afternoon, he did his best.
Professor Deering stopped altogether in the middle of a poorly constructed and entirely meaningless sentence. His audience, which had been shifting in their seats for some time stopped also and looked wonderingly at him.
Deering raised his hand and said, gaspingly, 'You! You there!'
Roger Toomey had been sitting with an air of complete relaxation - in the very centre of the aisle. The only chair beneath him was composed of two and a half feet of empty air. His legs were stretched out before him on the armrest of an equally airy chair.
When Deering pointed, Roger slid rapidly sidewise. By the time fifty heads turned, he was sitting quietly in a very prosaic wooden seat.
Roger looked this way and that, then stared at Deering's pointing finger and rose.
'Are you speaking to me, Professor Deering?' he asked, with only the slightest tremble in his voice to indicate the savage battle he was fighting within himself to keep that voice cool and wondering.
'What are you doing?' demanded Deering, his morning's tension exploding.
Some of the audience were standing in order to see better. An unexpected commotion is as dearly loved by a gathering of research physicists as by a crowd at a baseball game.
'I'm not doing anything,' said Roger. 'I don't understand you.'
'Get out! Leave this hall!'
Deering was beside himself with a mixture of emotions, or perhaps he would not have said that. At any rate, Roger sighed and took hi
s opportunity prayerfully.
He said, loudly and distinctly, forcing himself to be heard over the gathering clamour, 'I am Professor Roger Toomey of Carson College. I am a member of the American Physical Association. I have applied for permission to attend these sessions, have been accepted, and have paid my registration fee. I am sitting here as is my right and will continue to do so.'
Deering could only say blindly, 'Get out!'
'I will not,' said Roger. He was actually trembling with a synthetic and self-imposed anger. 'For what reason must I get out? What have I done?'
Deering put a shaking hand through his hair. He was quite unable to answer.
Roger followed up his advantage. 'If you attempt to evict me from these sessions without just cause, I shall certainly sue the Institute.'
Deering said, hurriedly, 'I call the first day's session of the Spring Seminars of Recent Advances in the Physical Sciences to a close. Our next session will be in this hall tomorrow at nine in--'
Roger left as he was speaking and hurried away.
There was a knock at Roger's hotel-room door that night. It startled him, froze him in his chair.
'Who is it?' he cried.
The answering voice was soft and hurried. 'May I see you?'
It was Deering's voice. Roger's hotel as well as his room number were, of course, recorded with the seminar secretary. Roger had hoped, but scarcely expected, that the day's events would have so speedy a consequence.
He opened the door, said stiffly, 'Good evening, Professor Deering.'
Deering stepped in and looked about. He wore a very light top-coat that he made no gesture to remove. He held his hat in his hand and did not offer to put it down.
He said, 'Professor Roger Toomey of Carson College. Right?' He said it with a certain emphasis, as though the name had significance.
'Yes. Sit down, Professor.'
Deering remained standing. 'Now what is it? What are you after?'
'I don't understand.'
'I'm sure you do. You aren't arranging this ridiculous foolery for nothing. Are you trying to make me seem foolish or is it that you expect to hoodwink me into some crooked scheme? I want you to know it won't work. And don't try to use force now. I have friends who know exactly where I am at this moment. I'll advise you to tell the truth and then get out of town.'
