No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (22 page)

A spooky thing—too spooky to be thrown open. A shuddery business, this reaching out to other minds across the universe. Not something which the public comfortably could sleep with. And what was the matter with the public? Thomas asked himself. Did they not realize that the project was mankind’s greatest hope? For thousands of years, mankind had staggered along on its own, coddling its prejudices, making its mistakes, then multiplying rather than correcting them, slipping into a too-human groove that had brought, in its turn, untold misery and injustice. New blood was needed, a new mentality, and the one place to get it was from those cultures far among the stars. A cross-pollination process that could improve the texture and might revise the purpose of mankind’s stumbling destiny.

The box on his desk chirped at him. He strode from the window and snapped down the toggle.

“What is it, Evelyn?”

“Senator Brown is on the phone.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas.

There was no one he wanted to talk with less than the senator.

He leaned back in his chair and pressed the button to activate the visor. The visor lighted to reveal the hatchet-face of the senator—ascetic, thin, wrinkled, but with a tightness to the wrinkles.

“Senator,” he said, “how kind of you to call.”

“I thought to pass the time of day,” said the senator. “It has been a long time since we have had a chat.”

“Yes, it has.”

“As you may know,” said the senator, “the budget for your project is coming up before committee in the next few weeks. I can get nothing out of these jackasses who are your superiors in Washington. They talk about knowledge being the most precious commodity. They say no market value can be placed upon it. I wonder if you would concur.”

“I think I would,” said Thomas, “although, if that is all they say, it’s a fairly general statement. There is so much spinoff. I suppose they told you that.”

“They did,” said the senator. “They dwelt most lovingly upon it.”

“Then what is it you want of me?”

“Realism. Some old-fashioned realism. A hard-headed assessment.”

“I’m fairly close to the operation. It’s hard for me to step back those few necessary paces to take a good objective look at it.”

“Well, do the best you can. This is off-the-record. Just between the two of us. If necessary, we’ll have you in to testify. To start with, maybe, how good are the chances for FTL?”

“We are working on it, senator. I have a feeling we still have a long way to go. We’re beginning to have a feeling that it may not be a simple matter of physical laws.”

“What could it be, then?”

“Emphasizing the fact that we do not really know, I’d be willing to hazard a guess that it might be something we have never heard of. A procedure, or a technique, maybe even a state of mind, that is outside all human experience.”

“Now you’re going mystic on me. I don’t like this mystic stuff.”

“In no way mystic, senator. Just a willingness to admit mankind’s limitations. It stands to reason that one race on one planet is not going to come up with everything there is.”

“Have you anything to back that up?”

“‘Senator, I think I have. For the last several months, one of our operators has been trying to explain to his opposite number some of the fundamentals of our economic system. It has been and still is a trying task. Even the simplest fundamentals—things like buying and selling, supply and demand—have been hard to put across. Those folks out there, whoever they are, have never even thought of our brand of economics, if, in fact, any kind of economics. What makes it even harder is that they appear to stand in absolute horror of some of the things we tell them. As if the very ideas were obscene.”

“Why bother with them, then?”

“Because they still maintain an interest. Perhaps the ideas are so horrible that they have a morbid fascination for them. As long as they maintain that interest, we’ll keep on working with them.”

“Our idea in starting this project was to help ourselves, not a lot of other folks.”

“It’s a two-way street,” said Thomas. “They help us, we help them. They teach us, we teach them. It’s a free interchange of information. And we’re not being as altruistic as you think. It is our hope that as we go along with this economic business, we’ll pick up some hints.”

“What do you mean, some hints?”

“Perhaps some indications of how we may be able to revise or modify our economic system.”

“Thomas, we have spent five or six thousand years or more in working out that economic system.”

“Which doesn’t mean, senator, that it is letter perfect. We made mistakes along the way.”

The senator grunted. “This, I take it, will be another long-term project?”

“All of our work, or the most of it, is long-term. Most of what we get is not readily or easily adapted to our use.”

“I don’t like the sound of it,” growled the senator. “I don’t much like anything I hear. I asked you for specifics.”

“I’ve given you specifics. I could spend the rest of the day giving you specifics.”

“You’ve been at this business for twenty-five years?”

“On a job like this, twenty-five years is a short time.”

“You tell me you’re getting nowhere on FTL. You’re piddling away your time teaching an economics course to some stupid jerks who are having a hard time knowing what you are talking about.”

“We do what we can,” said Thomas.

“It’s not enough,” said the senator. “The people are getting tired of seeing their taxes go into the project. They were never very much for it to start with. They were afraid of it. You could slip, you know, and give away our location.”

“No one has ever asked for our location.”

“They might have ways of getting it, anyhow.”

“Senator, that’s an old bugaboo that should long ago have been laid to rest. No one is going to attack us. No one is going to invade us. By and large, these are intelligent, and I would suspect, honorable gentlemen with whom we’re dealing. Even if they’re not, what we have here would not be worth their time and effort. What we are dealing in is information. They want it from us, we want it from them. It’s worth more than any other commodity that any of us may have.”

“Now we’re back to that again.”

“But, dammit, senator, that’s what it’s all about.”

“I hope you’re not letting us be taken in by some sort of slicker out there.”

“That’s a chance we have to take, but I doubt it very much. As director of this branch of the project, I’ve had the opportunity …”

The senator cut him off. “I’ll talk with you some other time.”

“Any time,” said Thomas, as affably as he was able. “I’ll look forward to it.”

5

They had gathered in the lounge, as was their daily custom, for a round of drinks before dinner.

Jay Martin was telling about what had happened earlier in the day.

“It shook me,” he said. “Here was this voice, from far away …”

“How did you know it was far away?” asked Thomas. “Before they told you, that is.”

“I can tell,” said Martin. “You get so you can tell. There is a certain smell to distance.”

He bent over quickly, reaching for a handkerchief, barely getting it up in time to muffle the explosive sneeze. Straightening, he mopped his face, wiped his streaming eyes.

“Your allergy again,” said Mary Kay.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “How in hell can a man pick up pollen out here in this desert? Nothing but sage and cactus.”’

“Maybe it’s not pollen,” said Mary Kay. “It could be mold. Or dandruff. Has anyone here got dandruff?”

“You can’t be allergic to human dandruff. It has to be cat dandruff,” said Jennie Sherman.

“We haven’t any cats here,” said Mary Kay, “so it couldn’t be cat dandruff. Are you sure about human dandruff, Jennie?”

“I’m sure,” said Jennie. “I read it somewhere.”

“Ever see a physician about it?” asked Thomas.

Martin shook his head, still mopping at his eyes.

“You should,” said Thomas. “You could be given allergy tests. A battery of tests until they find what you’re allergic to.”

“Go ahead and tell us more,” said Richard Garner, “about this guy who said the world was about to end.”

“Not the world,” said Martin. “The universe. He was just spreading the word. In a hurry to spread the word. As if they’d just found out. Like Chicken Little, yelling that the sky was falling. Talking for just a minute, then dropping out. I suppose going on to someone else. Trying to catch everyone he could. Sounded a little frantic. As if there was little time.”

“Maybe it was a joke,” suggested Jennie.

“I don’t think so. It didn’t sound like a joke. I don’t think any of the people out there joke. If so, I’ve never heard of it. Maybe we’re the only ones who have a sense of humor. Anyone here ever hear anything that sounded like a joke?”

They shook their heads.

“The rest of you are halfway laughing at it,” said Mary Kay. “I don’t think it’s funny at all. Here are these people out on the rim, trying all these years, for no one knows how many centuries, to understand the universe, then up pops someone and tells them the universe has run down and they, out at the edge of it, will be the first to go. Maybe they were very close to understanding. Maybe they needed only a few more years and now they haven’t got the years.”

“Would that be the way it would happen?” asked Hal Rawlins. “Jay, you’re the physicist. You’d be the one to know.”

“I can’t be certain, Hal. We don’t know enough about the structure of the universe. There might be certain conditions that we are not aware of. Entropy presupposes a spreading out, so that the total energy of a thermodynamic system is so evenly distributed that there is no energy available for work. That’s not the case here, of course. Out at the rim of the universe, maybe. The energy and matter out there would be old, have had more time. Or would it? God, I don’t know. I’m talking about something no one knows about.”

“But you finally contacted Einstein,” said Thomas.

“Yes, he came in a little later.”

“Anything?”

“No, the same as ever. We both got tired after a time, I guess. And talked about something else.”

“Is that the way it often goes?”

“Every now and then. Today we talked about houses. Or I think it was houses. Near as I can make out, they live in some sort of bubble. Got the impression of huge webs with bubbles scattered through them. Do you suppose Einstein could be some sort of spider?”

“Could be,” said Thomas.

“What beats the hell out of me,” said Martin, “is why Einstein sticks with me. He beats his brains out trying to tell me about FTL and I beat my brains out trying to understand what he’s telling me and never getting it. I swear I’m not a great deal closer than I was to start with, but he doesn’t give up on me. He just keeps boring in. What I can’t figure is what he’s getting out of it.”

“Every once in a while I get the funny feeling,” said Garner, “that maybe these aren’t different people who are talking to us. Not a lot of different cultures, but a lot of different individuals, maybe different specialists, from the same society.”

“I doubt that’s true,” said Jennie Sherman. “Mine has a personality. A real personality. And different, very different, from the personalities the rest of you talk about. This one of mine is obsessed with death …”

“What a doleful subject,” said Rawlins. “But I guess you’ve told us about him before. Talking about death all this time …”

“It was depressing to start with,” said Jennie, “but it’s not any more. He’s made a philosophy out of it. At times, he makes death sound almost beautiful.”

“A decadent race,” said Garner.

“It’s not that at all. I thought so at first. But he’s so joyful about it, so happy.”

“Death, Jennie, is not a joyful or happy subject,” said Thomas. “We’ve talked about this, you and I. Maybe you should put an end to it. Pick up someone else.”

“I will if you say so, Paul. But I have a feeling that something will come out of it. Some new kind of understanding, a new philosophy, a new principle. You haven’t looked at the data, have you?”

Thomas shook his head.

“I can’t tell why I feel this way,” she said. “But deep down, at the bottom of me, I do.”

“For the moment,” said Thomas, “that’s good enough for me.”

Rawlins said, “Jay spoke of something that bugs me, too. What are they getting out of it? What are any of them getting out of it? We’re giving them nothing.”

“That’s your guilt talking,” said Thomas. “Perhaps it’s something all of us are feeling. We must get rid of it. Wipe it from our minds. We feel intensely that we are beginners, that we’re the new kid in the neighborhood. We are takers, not givers, although that’s not entirely true. Dick has spent weeks trying to explain economics to his people.”

Garner made a wry face. “Trying is all I do. I try to reduce the basics to the lowest common denominator. Thoughts of one syllable. Each syllable said slowly. Printed in big type. And they don’t seem to get it. As if the very idea of economics was completely alien to them. As if hearing it were somehow distasteful. How in the world could a civilization develop and have any continuity without an economic system? I can’t envision it. With us, economics is our life blood. We’d be nothing without an economic system. We’d be in chaos.”

“Maybe that’s what they’re in,” said Rawlins. “Maybe chaos is a way of life for them. No rules, no regulations, nothing. Although even as I say it, that doesn’t sound quite right. Such a situation would be beyond our understanding, as repugnant to us as our economics seem to be to them.”

“We all have our blind spots,” said Thomas. “We’re beginning to find that out.”

“It would help though, it would help a lot,” said Martin, “if we could feel we’d done something for one or two of them. It would give us a feeling of status, of having paid our dues.”

“We’re new at it,” said Thomas. “The time will come. How are you getting along with your robot, Hal?”

“Damned if I know,” said Rawlins. “I can’t pin him down to anything. I can’t get in a word. This robot, if it is a robot, if it’s some sort of computer system—and for the life of me, I can’t tell you why I think it is. But, anyhow, it is a non-stop talker. Information, most of it trivial, I suspect, just flows out of it. Never sticks to one thing. Talks about one thing, then goes chattering off to something entirely unrelated. As if it has a memory bank filled to the brim with data and is trying, as rapidly as possible, to spew out all that information. When I pick up something that seems to have some promise to it, something that could be of more than usual interest, I try to break in to talk at greater length about it, to ask some questions. Most often I can’t break in, occasionally there are times I can. But when I do, he is impatient with me. He cuts off the discussion and goes back to his chatter. There are times when I get the impression that he’s not talking to me alone, but to a lot of other people. I have the idea that when I am able to break in, he uses one circuit to talk with me directly while he goes on talking to all those others through other circuits.”