The Winds of Change and Other Stories

by Isaac Asimov

  'Any change in the events of time would, after a - while alter everything unrecognizably.

  'But I wouldn't want that, I told you at the start, I do not wish to cease to be me. Even if in my place I would create someone who was more intelligent, more sensible, more successful, it would still not be me. 'Nor would I want to change you, Muller, or you, Adams. I've said that already, too. I would not want to triumph over a Muller who is less ingenious and spectacularly bright, or over an Adams who has been less politic and deft at putting together an imposing structure of respect. I would want to triumph over you as you are, and not over lesser beings.

  'Well, yes, it is triumph I wish.

  '--Oh, come. You stir as though I had said something unworthy. Is a sense of triumph so alien to you? Are you so dead to humanity that you seek no honour, no victory, no fame, no rewards? Am I to suppose that the respected Professor Adams does not wish to possess his long list of publications, his revered string of honorary degrees, his numerous medals and plaques, his post as head of one of the most prestige-filled departments of physics in the world?

  'And would you be satisfied to have all that, Adams, if no one were to know of it; if its existence were to be wiped out of all records and histories; if it were to remain a secret between you and the Almighty? A silly question. I certainly won't demand an answer when we all know what it would be.

  'And I needn't go through the same rigmarole of inquiry concerning Muller's potential Nobel Prize and what seems like a certain university presidency - and of this university, too.

  'What is it you both want in all of this, considering that you want not only the things themselves but the public knowledge of your ownership of these things? Surely you want triumph! You want triumph over your competitors as an abstract class, triumph over your fellow human beings. You want to do something others cannot do and to have all those know that you have done something they cannot do, so that they must then look up at you in helpless awareness of that knowledge and in envy and enforced admiration.

  'Shall I be more noble than you? Why? Let me have the privilege of wanting what you want, of hungering for the triumph you have hungered for. Why should I not want the long respect, the great prize, the high position that waits on you two? And to do so in your place? To snatch it from you at the moment of its attainment? It is no more disgraceful for me to glory in such things than for you to do so.

  'Ah, but you deserve it and I do not. There is precisely the point. What if I could so arrange the flow and content of time as to have me deserve it and you not?

  'Imagine! I would still be I; the two of you, the two of you. You would be no less worthy and I no more worthy -that being the condition I have set myself, that none of us change - and yet I deserve and you do not. I want to beat you, in other words, as you are and not as inferior substitutes.

  'In a way, that is a tribute to you, isn't it? I see from your expression you think it is. I imagine you both feel a kind of contemptuous pride. It is something after all to be the standard by which victory is measured. You enjoy earning the merits I lust for - especially if that lust must go unsatisfied.

  'I don't blame you for feeling so. In your place, I would feel the same.

  'But must the lust go unsatisfied? Think it out--

  'Suppose I were to go back in time, say twenty-five years. A nice figure; an even quarter century. You, Adams, would be forty. You would have just arrived here, a full professor, from your stint at Case Institute. You would have done your work in diamagnetics, though your unreported effort to do something with bismuth hypochromite had been a rather laughable failure.

  'Heavens, Adams, don't look so surprised. Do you think I don't know your professional life to the last detail--

  'And as for you, Muller, you were twenty-six, and just in the process of turning out a doctor's thesis on general relativity, which was fascinating at the time but is much less satisfying in retrospect than it was at the time. Had it been correctly interpreted, it would have anticipated most of Hawking's later conclusions, as you now know. You did not correctly interpret it at the time and you have successfully managed to hide that fact.

  'I'm afraid, Muller, you are not good at interpretation. You did not interpret your own doctor's thesis to its best advantage and you have not properly interpreted your great Field Theory. Perhaps, Muller, it isn't a disgrace, either. The lack of interpretation is a common event. We can't all have the interpretative knack, and the talent to shake loose consequences may not occur in the same mind that possesses the talent for brilliance of concept. I have the former without the latter so why should you not have the latter without the former?

  'If you could only create your marvellous thoughts, Muller, and leave it to me to see the equally marvellous conclusions. What a team we would make, you and I, Muller - but you wouldn't have me. I don't complain about that, for I wouldn't have you.

  'In any case, these are trifles. I could in no way damage you, Adams, with the pinprick of your silly handling of the bismuth salts. After all, you did, with some difficulty, catch your mistake before you embalmed it in the pages of a learned journal - if you could have got past the referees. And I could not cloud the sunshine that plays on you, Muller, by making a point of failure to deduce what might be deduced from your concepts. It might even be looked upon as a measure of your brilliance; that so much crowded into your thoughts that even you were not bright enough to wring them dry of consequence.

  'But if that would not do, what would? How could matters be changed properly? Fortunately, I could study the situation for a length of - something - that my consciousness would interpret as years, and yet there would be no physical time passage and therefore no ageing. My thought processes would continue, but my physical metabolism would not.

  'You smile again. No, I don't know how that could be. Surely, our thought processes are part of our metabolic changes. I can only suppose that outside the time-stream, thought processes are not thought processes in the physical sense, but are something else that is equivalent.

  'And if I study a moment in time, and search for a change that will accomplish what I want it to accomplish, how could I do that? Could I make a change, move forwards in time, study the consequences and, if I didn't like it, move back, unchange the change and try another? If I did it fifty times, a thousand times, could I ever find the right change? The number of changes, each with numberless consequences, each with further numberless consequences, is beyond computation or comprehension. How could I find the change I was seeking?

  'Yet I could. I could learn how and I can't tell you how I learned or what I did after I learned. Would it be so difficult? Think of the things we do learn.

  'We stand, we walk, we run, we hop - and we do it all even though we are tipped on end. We are in an utter state of instability. We remain standing only because the large muscles of our legs and torso are forever lightly contracting and pulling this way and that, like a circus performer balancing a stick on the end of his nose.

  'Physically, it's hard. That is why standing still takes it out of us and makes us glad to sit down after a while. That is why standing at attention for an unfairly long period of time will lead to collapse. Yet, except when we take it to extremes, we do it so well, we're not even aware we do it. We can stand and walk and run and hop and start and stop all day long and never fall or even become seriously unsteady. Well, then, describe how you do it so that someone who has never tried can do it. You can't.

  'Another example. We can talk. We can stretch and contract the muscles of our tongue and lips and cheeks and palate in a rapid and unrhythmic set of changes that produce just the modulation of sound that we want. It was hard enough to learn when we were infants, but once we learned, we could produce dozens of words a minute without any conscious effort. Well, how do we do it? What changes do we produce to say, "How do we do it?" Describe those changes to someone who has never spoken, so that he can make that sound! It can't be done.

  'But we can make the sound. An
d without effort, too.

  'Given enough time -I don't even know how to describe the passage of what I mean. It was not time; call it "duration". Given enough duration without the passage of time, I learned how to adjust reality as desired. It was like a child babbling, but gradually learning to pick and choose among the babbles to construct words. I learned to choose.

  'It was risky, of course. In the process of learning, I might have done something irreversible; or at least something which, for reversal, would have required subtle changes that were beyond me. I did not. Perhaps it was more good fortune than anything else.

  'And I came to enjoy it. It was like the painting of a picture, the construction of a piece of sculpture. It was much more than that; it was the carving of a new reality. A new reality unchanged from our own in key ways. I remained exactly what I am; Adams remained the eternal Adams; Muller, the quintessential Muller. The university remained the university; science, science.

  'Well, then, did nothing change? - But I'm losing your attention. You no longer believe me and, if I am any judge, feel scornful with what I am saying. I seem to have slipped in my enthusiasm and I have began acting as though time-travel were real and that I have really done what I would like to do. Forgive me. Consider it imagination - fantasy -I say what I might have done if time-travel were real and if I truly had the talent for it.

  'In that case - in my imagination - did nothing change? There would have to be some change; one that would leave Adams exactly Adams and yet unfit to be head of the department; Muller to be precisely Muller and yet without any likelihood of becoming university president and without much chance of being voted the Nobel Prize.

  'And I would have to be myself, unlovable and plodding, and unable to create - and yet possessing the qualities that would make me university president.

  'It could be nothing scientific; it would have to be something outside science; something disgraceful and sordid that would disqualify you fine gentlemen--

  'Come, now. I don't deserve those looks of mingled disdain and smug self-satisfaction. You are sure, I take it, that you can do nothing disgraceful and sordid? How can you be sure? There's not one of us who, if conditions were right, would not slip into - shall we call it sin? Who among us would be without sin, given the proper temptation? Who among us is without sin?

  'Think, think - are you sure your souls are pure? Have you done nothing wrong, ever? Have you never at least nearly fallen into the pit? And if you have, was it not a narrow escape, brought about more through some fortunate circumstance than inner virtue? And if someone had closely studied all your actions and noted the strokes of fortune that kept you safe and deflected just one of them, might you not then have done wrong?

  'Of course, if you had lived openly foul and sordid lives so that people turned from you in disdain and disgust you would not have reached your present states of reverence. You would have fallen long since and I would not have to step over your disgraced bodies for you would not be here to serve me as stepping stones.

  'You see how complex it all is?

  'But then, it is all the more exciting, you see. If I were to go back in time and find that the solution was not complex, that in one stroke I could achieve my aim, I might manage to gain pleasure out of it but there would be a lack of intellectual excitement.

  'If we were to play chess and I were to win by a fool's mate in three moves, it would be a victory that was worse than defeat. I would have played an unworthy opponent and I would be disgraced for having done so.

  'No. The victory that is worth while is the one snatched slowly and with pain from the reluctant grip of the adversary; a victory that seems unattainable; a victory that is as wearying, as torturing, and as hopelessly bone-breaking as the worst and most tedious defeat but that has, as its difference, the fact that, while you are panting and gasping in total exhaustion, it is the flag you hold in your hand, the trophy.

  'The duration I spent playing with that most intractable of all material, reality, was filled with the difficulty I had set myself. I insisted stubbornly not only on having my aim, but on my having that aim my way; on rejecting everything that was not exactly as I wanted it to be. A near miss I considered a miss; an almost hit I eliminated as not a hit. In my target, I had a bull's-eye and nothing else.

  'And even after I won, it would have to be a victory so subtle that you would not know I had won until I had carefully explained it to you. To the final moment, you would not know your life had been turned wrong end up. That is what--

  'But wait, I have left out something. I have been so caught up in the intensity of my intention of leaving us and the university and science all the same, that I have not explained that other things might indeed change. There would be bound to be changes in social, political and economic forces, and in international relationships. Who would care about such things after all? Certainly not we three.

  'That is the marvel of science and the scientist, is it not? What is it to us whom we elect in our dear United States, or what votes were taken in the United Nations, or whether the stock market went up or down, or whether the unending pavane of the nations followed this pattern or that? As long as science is there and the laws of nature hold fast and the game we play continues, the background against which we play it is just a meaningless shifting of light and shadow.

  'Perhaps you don't feel this openly, Muller. I know well you have, in your time, felt yourself part of society and have placed yourself on record with views on this and that. To a lesser extent so did you, Adams. Both of you have had exalted views concerning humanity and the Earth and various abstractions. How much of that, however, was a matter of greasing your conscience because inside - deep inside - you don't really care, as long as you can sit brooding over your scientific thoughts.

  'That's one big difference between us. I don't care what 'Now I think that for the first time I catch expressions on your faces that don't ring the changes of weary tolerance, of contempt, of amusement, of annoyance. Do I catch a whiff of fear? Do you remember what I am talking about?

  'Think! Think! Who were members of the League of Constitutional Freedoms? Who helped circulate the Free Thought Manifesto! It was very brave and honourable of you to do this, some people thought. You were much applauded by the underground. - Come, come, you know whom I mean by the underground. You're not active in it any longer. Your position is too exposed and you have too much to lose. You have position and power, and there is more on the way. Why risk it for something that people don't want?

  'You wear your pendants, and you're numbered among the godly. But my pendant is larger and I am more godly, for I have not committed your crimes. What is more, gentlemen, I get the credit for having informed against you.

  'A shameful act? A scandalous act? My informing? Not at all. I shall be rewarded. I have been horrified at the hypocrisy of my colleagues, disgusted and nauseated at their subversive past, concerned for what they might be plotting now against the best and noblest and most godly society ever established on Earth. As a result I brought all this to the attention of the decent men who help conduct the policies of that society in true sobriety of thought and humility of spirit.

  'They will wrestle with your evils to save your souls and to make you true children of the Spirit. There will be some damage to your bodies in the process, I imagine, but what of that? It would be a trivial cost compared to the vast and eternal good they will bring you. And I shall be rewarded for making it all possible.

  'I think you are really frightened now, gentlemen, for the message we have all been waiting for is now coming, and you see now why I have been asked to remain here with you. The presidency is mine and my interpretation of the Muller theory, combined with the disgrace of Muller, will make it the Dinsmore theory in the textbooks and may bring me the Nobel Prize. As for you--'

  There was the sound of footsteps in cadence outside the door; a ringing cry of 'Halt!'

  The door was flung open. In stepped a man whose sober grey garb, wide white c
ollar, tall buckled hat and large bronze cross proclaimed him a captain in the dreadful Legion of Decency.

  He said, nasally, 'Horatio Adams, I arrest you in the name of God and the Congregation for the crime of devilry and witchcraft. Carl Muller, I arrest you in the name of God and the Congregation for the crime of devilry and witchcraft.'

  His hand beckoned briefly and quickly. Two legionnaires from the ranks came up to the two physicists who sat in stupefied horror in their chairs, yanked them to their feet, placed cuffs on their wrists, and, with an initial gesture of humility to the sacred symbol, tore the small crosses that were pendant from their lapels.

  The captain turned to Dinsmore. 'Yours in sanctity, sir. I have been asked to deliver this communication from the Board of Trustees.'

  'Yours in sanctity, Captain.' said Dinsmore gravely, fingering his own pendant cross. 'I rejoice to receive the words of those godly men.'

  He knew what the communication contained.

  As the new president of the university, he might, if he chose, lighten the punishment of the two men. His triumph would be enough even so.

  --But only if it were safe.

  --And in the grip of the Moral Majority, he must remember, no one was ever truly safe.

  The end.