The Push of a Finger - (3)

"Ready all, sir."
    The seconds ticked off with agonizing slowness. At the moment of zero the workers were galvanized into quick action. It was impossible to follow their motions or understand them, but you could see by the smooth timing and interplay that they were beautifully rehearsed. There was tragedy in those efforts for us who already knew the outcome.
    As quickly as they had begun, the workers stopped and peered upward through the crystal dome. Far beyond them, crisp in the velvet blackness, that star gleamed, and as they watched, it winked out.
    They started and exclaimed, pointing. The graybeard cried:
    "It's impossible!"
    "What is it, sir?"
    "I--"
    And in that moment blackness enveloped the scene.
    I said: "Hold it--"
    Yarr brought up the lights and the others turned to look at me. I thought for a while, idly watching the shimmering cams and cogs around me. Then I said: "It's a good start. The reason I imagine you gentlemen have been slightly bewildered up to now is that you're busy men with no time for foolishness. Now I'm not so busy and very foolish, so I read detective stories. This is going to be kind of backward detective story."
    "All right," Groating said. "Go ahead."
    "We've got a few clues. First, the Universe has ended through an attempt to pervade it with energy from hyperspace. Second, the attempt failed for a number of reasons which we can't discover yet. Third, the attempt was made in secrecy. Why?"
    The controller said: "Why not? Scientists and all that--"
    "I don't mean that kind of secrecy. These men were plainly outside the law, carrying on an illicit experiment. We must find out why energy experiments or atomic experiments were illegal. That will carry us back quite a few decades toward the present."
    "But how?"
    "Why, we trace the auxiliary cruiser, of course. If we can pick them up when they're purchasing supplies, we'll narrow our backward search considerably. Can you do it, Dr. Yarr?"
    "It'll take time."
    "Go ahead--we've got a thousand years."
    It took exactly two days. In that time I learned a lot about the Prognosticator. They had it worked out beautifully. Seems the future is made up solely of probabilities. The Integrator could push down any one of these possible avenues, but with a wonderful check. The less probable the avenue of future was, the more off-focus it was. If a future event was only remotely possible, it was pictured as a blurred series of actions. On the other hand, the future that was almost-positive in the light of present data, was sharply in focus.
    When we went back to the Prog Building two days later, Yarr was almost alive in his excitement. He said: "I really think I've got just the thing you're looking for."
    "What's that?"
    "I've picked up an actual moment of bribery. It has additional data that should put us directly on the track."
    We sat down behind the desk with Yarr at the controls. He had a slip of paper in his hand which he consulted with much muttering as he adjusted co-ordinates. Once more we saw the preliminary off-focus shadows, then the sound blooped on like a hundred Stereo records playing at once. The crystal sharpened abruptly into focus.
    The scream and roar of a gigantic foundry blasted our ears. On both sides of the scene towered the steel girder columns of the foundry walls, stretching deep into the background like the grim pillars of a satanic cathedral. Overhead cranes carried enormous blocks of metal with a ponderous gait. Smoke--black, white and fitfully flared with crimson from the furnaces, whirled around the tiny figures.
    Two men stood before a gigantic casting. One, a foundryman in soiled overalls, made quick measurements which he called off to the other carefully checking a blueprint. Over the roar of the foundry the dialogue was curt and sharp:
    "One hundred three point seven."
    "Check."
    "Short axis. Fifty-two point five."
    "Check."
    "Tangent on ovate diameter. Three degrees point oh five two."
    "Check."
    "What specifications for outer convolutions?"
    "Y equals cosine X."
    "Then that equation resolves to X equals minus one half Pi."
    "Check."
    The foundryman climbed down from the casting, folding his three-way gauge. He mopped his face with a bit of waste and eyed the engineer curiously as the latter carefully rolled up the blueprint and slid it into a tube of other rolled sheets. The foundryman said: "I think we did a nice job."
    The engineer nodded.
    "Only what in blazes do you want it for. Never saw a casting like that."
    "I could explain, but you wouldn't understand. Too complicated."
    The foundryman flushed. He said: "You theoretical guys are too damned snotty. Just because I know how to drop-forge doesn't mean I can't understand an equation."
    "Mebbeso. Let it go at that. I'm ready to ship this casting out at once."
    As the engineer turned to leave, rapping the rolled blueprints nervously against his calf, a great pig of iron that had been sailing up from the background swung dangerously toward his head. The foundryman cried out. He leaped forward, seized the engineer by the shoulder and sent him tumbling to the concrete floor. The blueprints went flying.
    He pulled the engineer to his feet immediately and tried to straighten the dazed man who could only stare at the tons of iron that sailed serenely on. The foundryman picked up the scattered sheets and started to sort them. Abruptly he stopped and examined one of the pages closely. He began to look through the others, but before he could go any further, the blueprints were snatched from his hands.
    He said: "What's this casting for?"
    The engineer rolled the sheets together with quick, intense motions. He said: "None of your blasted business."
    "I think I know. That's one-quarter a cyclotron. You're getting the other parts made up in different foundries, aren't you?"
    There was no answer.
    "Maybe you've forgotten Stabilization Rule 930."
    "I haven't forgotten. You're crazy."
    "Want me to call for official inspection?"
    The engineer took a breath, then shrugged. He said: "I suppose the only way to convince you is to show you the master drafts. Come on--"
    *       *       *       *       *
    They left the foundry and trudged across the broad concrete of a landing field to where the fat needle of the auxiliary ship lay. They mounted the ramp to the side port and entered the ship. Inside, the engineer called: "It's happened again, boys. Let's go!"
    The port swung shut behind them. Spacemen drifted up from the surrounding corridors and rooms. They were rangy and tough-looking and the sub-nosed paralyzers glinted casually in their hands as though they'd been cleaning them and merely happened to bring them along. The foundryman looked around for a long time. At last he said: "So it's this way?"
    "Yes, it's this way. Sorry."
    "I'd like you to meet some of my friends, some day--"
    "Perhaps we will."
    "They'll have an easier time with you than you're gonna have with me!" He clenched fists and poised himself to spring.
    The engineer said: "Hey--wait a minute. Don't lose your head. You did me a good turn back there. I'd like to return the favor. I've got more credit than I know what to do with."
    The foundryman gave him a perplexed glance. He relaxed and began to rub his chin dubiously.
    He said: "Damn if this isn't a sociable ship. I feel friendlier already--"
    The engineer grinned.
    I called: "O.K., that's enough. Cut it," and the scene vanished.
    "Well?" Yarr asked eagerly.
    I said: "We're really in the groove now. Let's check back and locate the Stabilization debates on Rule 930." I turned to the C-S. "What's the latest rule number, sir?"
    Groating said: "Seven fifteen."
    The controller had already been figuring. He said: "Figuring the same law-production rate that would put Rule 930 about six hundred years from now. Is that right, Mr. Groating?"
    The old man nodded and Yarr went back to his keyboard. I'm not going to bother you with what we all went through because a lot of it was very dull. For the benefit of the hermit from the Moon I'll just mention that we hung around the Stability Library until we located the year S. R. 930 was passed. Then we shifted to Stability headquarters and quick-timed through from January 1st until we picked up the debates on the rule.
    The reasons for the rule were slightly bewildering on the one hand, and quite understandable on the other. It seems that in the one hundred and fifty years preceding, almost every Earth-wide university had been blown up in the course of an atomic-energy experiment. The blow-ups were bewildering--the rule understandable. I'd like to tell you about that debate because--well, because things happened that touched me.
    The Integrator selected a cool, smooth foyer in the Administration Building at Washington. It had a marble floor like milky ice flecked with gold. One side was broken by a vast square window studded with a thousand round-bottle panes that refracted the afternoon sunlight into showers of warm color. In the background were two enormous doors of synthetic oak. Before those doors stood a couple in earnest conversation--a nice-looking boy with a portfolio under his arm, and a stunning girl. The kind with sleek-shingled head and one of those clean-cut faces that look fresh and wind-washed.
    The controller said: "Why, that's the foyer to the Seminar Room. They haven't changed it at all in six hundred years."
    Groating said: "Stability!" and chuckled.
    Yarr said: "The debate is going on inside. I'll shift scene--"
    "No--wait," I said. "Let's watch this for a while." I don't know why I wanted to--except that the girl made my pulse run a little faster and I felt like looking at her for a couple of years.
    *       *       *       *       *
    She was half crying. She said: "Then, if for no other reason--for my sake."
    "For yours!" The boy looked harassed.
    She nodded. "You'll sweep away his life work with a few words and a few sheets of paper."
    "My own work, too."
    "Oh, but won't you understand? You're young. I'm young. Youth loves to shatter the old idols. It feasts on the broken shards of destruction. It destroys the old ideas to make way for its own. But he's not young like us. He has only his past work to live on. If you shatter that, he'll have nothing left but a futile resentment. I'll be pent up with a broken old man who'll destroy me along with himself. Darling, I'm not saying you're wrong--I'm only asking you to wait a little."
    She was crying openly now. The boy took her by the arm and led her to the crusted window. She turned her face away from the light--away from him. The boy said: "He was my teacher. I worship him. What I'm doing now may seem like treachery, but it's only treachery to his old age. I'm keeping faith with what he was thirty years ago--with the man who would have done the same thing to his teacher."
    She cried: "But are you keeping faith with me? You, who will have all the joy of destroying and none of the tedious sweeping away the pieces. What of my life and all the weary years to come when I must coddle him and soothe him and lead him through the madness of forgetting what you've done to him?"
    "You'll spend your life with me. I break no faith with you, Barbara."
    She laughed bitterly. "How easily you evade reality. I shall spend my life with you--and in that short sentence, poof!"--she flicked her hand--"you dismiss everything. Where will he live? Alone? With us? Where?"
    "That can be arranged."
    "You're so stubborn, so pig-headed in your smug, righteous truth-seeking. Steven--for the very last time--please. Wait until he's gone. A few years, that's all. Leave him in peace. Leave us in peace."
    He shook his head and started toward the oaken doors. "A few years waiting to salvage the pride of an old man, a few more catastrophies, a few more thousand lives lost--it doesn't add up."
    She sagged against the window, silhouetted before the riot of color, and watched him cross to the doors. All the tears seemed drained out of her. She was so limp I thought she would fall to the floor at any instant. And then, as I watched her, I saw her stiffen and I realized that another figure had entered the foyer and was rushing toward the boy. It was an oldish man, bald and with an ageless face of carved ivory. He was tall and terribly thin. His eyes were little pits of embers.
    He called: "Steven!"
    The boy stopped and turned.
    *       *       *       *       *
    "Steven, I want to talk to you."
    "It's no use, sir!"
    "You're headstrong, Steven. You pit a few years' research against my work of a lifetime. Once I respected you. I thought you would carry on for me as I've carried on for the generations that came before me."
    "I am, sir."
    "You are not." The old man clutched at the boy's tunic and spoke intensely. "You betray all of us. You will cut short a line of research that promises the salvation of humanity. In five minutes you will wipe out five centuries of work. You owe it to those who slaved before us not to let their sweat go in vain."
    The boy said: "I have a debt also to those who may die."
    "You think too much of death, too little of life. What if a thousand more are killed--ten thousand--in the end it will be worth it."
    "It will never be worth it. There will never be an end. The theory has always been wrong, faultily premised."
    "You fool!" the old man cried. "You damned, blasted young fool. You can't go in there!"
    "I'm going, sir. Let go."
    "I won't let you go in."
    The boy pulled his arm free and reached for the doorknob. The old man seized him again and yanked him off balance. The boy muttered angrily, set himself and thrust the old man back. There was a flailing blur of motion and a cry from the girl. She left the window, ran across the room and thrust herself between the two. And in that instant she screamed again and stepped back. The boy sagged gently to the floor, his mouth opened to an O of astonishment. He tried to speak and then relaxed. The girl dropped to her knees alongside him and tried to get his head on her lap. Then she stopped.
    That was all. No shot or anything. I caught a glimpse of a metallic barrel in the old man's hand as he hovered frantically over the dead boy. He cried: "I only meant to--I--" and kept on whimpering.
    After a while the girl turned her head as though it weighed a ton, and looked up. Her face was suddenly frostbitten. In dull tones she said: "Go away, father."
    The old man said: "I only--" His lips continued to twitch, but he made no sound.
    The girl picked up the portfolio and got to her feet. Without glancing again at her father, she opened the doors, stepped in and closed them behind her with a soft click. The debating voices broke off at the sight of her. She walked to the head of the table, set the portfolio down, opened it and took out a sheaf of type-script. Then she looked at the amazed men who were seated around the table gaping at her.
    She said: "I regret to inform the stabilizers that Mr. Steven Wilder has been unavoidably detained. As his fiancée and co-worker, however, I have been delegated to carry on his mission and present his evidence to the committee--" She paused and went rigid, fighting for control.
    One of the stabilizers said: "Thank you. Will you give your evidence, Miss ... Miss?"
    "Barbara Leeds."
    "Thank you, Miss Leeds. Will you continue?"
    With the gray ashes of a voice she went on: "We are heartily in favor of S. R. 930 prohibiting any further experimentation in atomic energy dynamics. All such experiments have been based on--almost inspired by the FitzJohn axioms and mathematic. The catastrophic detonations which have resulted must invariably result since the basic premises are incorrect. We shall prove that the backbone of FitzJohn's equations is entirely in error. I speak of
    i = (b/a) π i e/μ..."
    She glanced at the notes, hesitated for an instant, and then continued: "FitzJohn's errors are most easily pointed out if we consider the Leeds Derivations involving transfinite cardinals--"
    The tragic voice droned on.
    I said: "C-cut."
    There was silence.
    We sat there feeling bleak and cold, and for no reason at all, the icy sea-green opening bars of Debussy's "La Mer" ran through my head. I thought: "I'm proud to be a human--not because I think or I am, but because I can feel. Because humanity can reach out to us across centuries, from the past or future, from facts or imagination, and touch us--move us."
    At last I said: "We're moving along real nice now."
    No answer.
    I tried again: "Evidently that secret experiment that destroyed existence was based on this FitzJohn's erroneous theory, eh?"
    The C-S stirred and said: "What? Oh--Yes, Carmichael, quite right."
    In low tones the controller said: "I wish it hadn't happened. He was a nice-looking youngster, that Wilder--promising."
    I said: "In the name of heaven, sir, it's not going to happen if we pull ourselves together. If we can locate the very beginning and change it, he'll probably marry the girl and live happily ever after."
    "Of course--" The controller was confused. "I hadn't realized."
    I said: "We've got to hunt back a lot more and locate this FitzJohn. He seems to be the key man in this puzzle."
    *       *       *       *       *
    And how we searched. Boys, it was like working a four-dimensional jig saw, the fourth dimension in this case being time. We located a hundred universities that maintained chairs and departments exclusively devoted to FitzJohn's mathematics and theories. We slipped back a hundred years toward the present and found only fifty and in those fifty were studying the men whose pupils were to fill the chairs a century later.
    Another century back and there were only a dozen universities that followed the FitzJohn theories. They filled the scientific literature with trenchant, belligerent articles on FitzJohn, and fought gory battles with his opponents. How we went through the libraries. How many shoulders we looked over. How many pages of equations we snap-photographed from the whirling octahedron for future reference. And finally we worked our way back to Bowdoin College, where FitzJohn himself had taught, where he worked out his revolutionary theories and where he made his first converts. We were on the home stretch.
    FitzJohn was a fascinating man. Medium height, medium color, medium build--his body had the rare trick of perfect balance. No matter what he was doing, standing, sitting, walking, he was always exquisitely poised. He was like the sculptor's idealization of the perfect man. FitzJohn never smiled. His face was cut and chiseled, as though from a roughish sandstone; it had the noble dignity of an Egyptian carving. His voice was deep, unimpressive in quality, yet unforgettable for the queer, intense stresses it laid on his words. Altogether he was an enigmatic creature.
    He was enigmatic for another reason, too, for although we traced his career at Bowdoin backward and forward for all its forty years, although we watched him teach the scores and scores of disciples who afterward went out into the scholastic world to take up the fight for him--we could never trace FitzJohn back into his youth. It was impossible to pick him up at any point earlier than his first appearance on the physics staff of the college. It seemed as though he were deliberately concealing his identity.
    Yarr raged with impotent fury. He said: "It's absolutely aggravating. Here we follow the chain back to less than a half century from today and we're blocked--" He picked up a small desk phone and called upstairs to the data floors. "Hullo, Cullen? Get me all available data on the name FitzJohn. FitzJOHN. What's the matter, you deaf? F-I-T-Z ... That's right. Be quick about it."
    I said: "Seems as if FitzJohn didn't want people to know where he came from."
    "Well," Yarr said pettishly, "that's impossible. I'll trace him backward second by second, if I have to!"
    I said: "That would take a little time, wouldn't it?"
    "Yes."
    "Maybe a couple of years?"
    "What of it? You said we had a thousand."
    "I didn't mean you to take me seriously, Dr. Yarr."
    The small pneumatic at Yarr's desk whirred and clicked. Out popped a cartridge. Yarr opened it and withdrew a list of figures, and they were appalling. Something like two hundred thousand FitzJohns on the Earth alone. It would take a decade to check the entire series through the Integrator. Yarr threw the figures to the floor in disgust and swiveled around to face us.
    "Well?" he asked.
    I said: "Seems hopeless to check FitzJohn back second by second. At that rate we might just as well go through all the names on the list."
    "What else is there to do?"
    I said: "Look, the Prognosticator flirted twice with something interesting when we were conning FitzJohn's career. It was something mentioned all through the future, too."
    "I don't recall--" the C-S began.
    "It was a lecture, sir," I explained. "FitzJohn's first big lecture when he set out to refute criticism. I think we ought to pick that up and go through it with a fine comb. Something is bound to come out of it."
    "Very well."
    *       *       *       *       *
    Images blurred across the spinning crystal as Yarr hunted for the scene. I caught fuzzy fragments of a demolished Manhattan City with giant crablike creatures mashing helpless humans, their scarlet chiton glittering. Then an even blurrier series of images. A city of a single stupendous building towering like Babel into the heavens; a catastrophic fire roaring along the Atlantic seaboard; then a sylvan civilization of odd, naked creatures flitting from one giant flower to another. But they were all so far off focus they made my eyes ache. The sound was even worse.