The Early Asimov Volume 3

Chapter Nineteen

The connection was an illusion, of course. If Maynard were to reach out a hand, he could feel the invisible wall.

Even the robots were quite accustomed to the paradox, and when Hijkman raised a hand for a cigarette, Maynard's robot made no move to satisfy the desire, though a half-minute passed before Hijkman's own robot could do so.

The two men spoke like Outer Worlders, that is, stiffly and in syllables too clipped to be friendly, and yet certainly not hostile. Merely undefmably lacking in the cream - however sour and thin at times - of human sociability which is so forced upon the inhabitants of Earth's ant heaps.

Maynard said: 'I have long wanted a private communion, Hijkman. My duties in the Gathering, this year-'

'Quite. That is understood. You are welcome now, of course. In fact, especially so, since I have heard of the superior nature of your grounds and landscaping. Is it true that your cattle are fed on imported grass?"

'I'm afraid that is a slight exaggeration. Actually, certain of my best milkers feed on Terrestrial imports during calving time, but such a procedure would be prohibitively expensive, I'm afraid, if made general. It yields quite extraordinary milk, however. May I have the privilege of sending you a day's output?"

'It would be most kind of you.' Hijkman bent his head, gravely. 'You must receive some of my salmon in return.'

To a Terrestrial eye, the two men might have appeared much alike. Both were tall, though not unusually so for Aurora, where the average height of the adult male is six feet one and one half inches. Both were blond and hard-muscled, with sharp and pronounced features. Though neither was younger than forty, middle-age as yet sat lightly upon them.

So much for amenities. Without a change in tone, Maynard proceeded to the serious purpose of his call.

He said: 'The Committee, you know, is now largely engaged with Moreanu and his Conservatives. We would like to deal with them firmly, we of the Independents, that is. But before we can do so with the requisite calm and certainty, I would like to ask you certain questions.'

'Why me?'

'Because you are Aurora 's most important physicist.'

Modesty is an unnatural attitude, and one which is only with difficulty taught to children. In an individualistic society it is useless and Hijkman was, therefore, unencumbered with it. He simply nodded objectively at Maynard's last words.

'And,' continued Maynard, 'as one of us. You are an Independent.'

'I am a member of the Party. Dues-paying, but not very active.'

'Nevertheless safe. Now, tell me, have you heard of the Pacific Project.'

'The Pacific Project?' There was a polite inquiry in his words.

'It is something which is taking place on Earth. The Pacific is a Terrestrial ocean, but the name itself probably has no significance.'

'I have never heard of it.'

'I am not surprised. Few have, even on Earth. Our communion, by the way, is via tight-beam and nothing must go further.'

'I understand.'

'Whatever Pacific Project is - and our agents are extremely vague - it might conceivably be a menace. Many of those who on Earth pass for scientists seem to be connected with it. Also, some of Earth's more radical and foolish politicians.'

'Hm-m-m. There was once something called the Manhattan Project.'

'Yes,' urged Maynard, 'what about it?'

'Oh, it's an ancient thing. It merely occurred to me because of the analogy in names. The Manhattan Project was before the time of extra-terrestrial travel. Some petty war in the dark ages occurred, and it was the name given to a group of scientists who developed atomic power.'

'Ah,' Maynard's hand became a fist, 'and what do you think the Pacific Project can do, then?'

Hijkman considered. Then, softly: 'Do you think Earth is planning war?'

On Maynard's face there was a sudden expression of distaste. 'Six billion people. Six billion half-apes, rather, jammed into one system to a near-explosion point, facing only some millions of us, total. Don't you think it is a dangerous situation?'

'Oh, numbers!'

'All right. Are we safe despite the numbers? Tell me. I'm only an administrator, and you're a physicist. Can Earth win a war in any way?'

Hijkman sat solemnly in his chair and thought carefully and slowly. Then he said: 'Let us reason. There are three broad classes of methods whereby an individual or group can gain his ends against opposition. On an increasing level of subtlety, those three classes can be termed the physical, the biological and the psychological.

'Now, the physical can be easily eliminated. Earth does not have an industrial background. It does not have a technical know-how. It has very limited resources. It lacks even a single outstanding physical scientist. So it is as impossible as anything in the Galaxy can be that they can develop any form of physico-chemical application that is not already known to the Outer Worlds. Provided, of course, that the conditions of the problem imply single-handed opposition on the part of Earth against any or all of the Outer Worlds. I take it that none of the Outer Words intends leaguing with Earth against us.'

Maynard indicated violent opposition even to the suggestion, 'No, no, no. There is no question of that. Put it out of your mind.'

'Then, ordinary physical surprise weapons are inconceivable. It is useless to discuss it further.'

'Then, what about your second class, the biological?'

Slowly, Hijkman lifted his eyebrows: 'Now, that is less certain. Some Terrestrial biologists are quite competent, I am told. Naturally, since I am myself a physicist, I am not entirely qualified to judge this. Yet I believe that in certain restricted fields, they are still expert. In agricultural science, of course, to give an obvious example. And in bacteriology. Um-m-m-'

'Yes, what about bacteriological warfare?'

'A thought! But no, no, quite inconceivable. A teeming, constricted world such as Earth cannot afford to fight an open latticework of fifty sparse worlds with germs. They are infinitely more subject to epidemics, that is, to retaliation in kind. In fact, I would say that given our living conditions here on Aurora and on the other Outer Worlds, no contagious disease could really take hold. No, Maynard. You can check with a bacteriologist, but I think he'll tell you the same.'

Maynard said: 'And the third class?'

'The psychological? Now, that is unpredictable. And yet the Outer Worlds are intelligent and healthy communities and not amenable to ordinary propaganda, or for that matter to any form of unhealthy emotionalism. Now, I wonder -'

'Yes?'

'What if the Pacific Project is just that? I mean, a huge device to keep us off balance. Something top-secret, but meant to leak out in just the right fashion, so that the Outer Worlds yield a little to Earth, simply in order to play safe.'

There was a longish silence.

'Impossible,' burst out Maynard, angrily.

'You react properly. You hesitate. But I don't seriously press the interpretation. It is merely a thought.' A longer silence, then Hijkman spoke again: 'Are there any other questions?'

Maynard started out of a reverie, 'No... no -'

The wave broke off and a wall appeared where space had been a moment before.

Slowly, with stubborn disbelief, Franklin Maynard shook his head.

Ernest Keilin mounted the stairs with a feeling for all the past centuries. The building was old, cobwebbed with history. It once housed the Parliament of Man, and from it words went out that clanged throughout the stars.

It was a tall building. It soared - stretched - strained. Out and up to the stars, it reached; to the stars that had now turned away.

It no longer even housed the Parliament of Earth. That had now been switched to a newer, neoclassical building, one that imperfectly aped the architectural stylisms of the ancient pre-Atomic age.

Yet the older building still held its great name. Officially, it was still Stellar House, but it only housed the functionaries of a shriveled bureaucracy now.

Keilin got out at the twelfth floor, and the lift dropped quickly down behind him. The radiant sign said smoothly and quietly: Bureau of Information. He handed a letter to the receptionist. He waited. And eventually, he passed through the door which said, 'L. Z. Cellioni - Secretary of Information.'

Cellioni was little and dark. His hair was thick and black, his mustache thin and black. His teeth, when he smiled, were startlingly white and even - so he smiled often.

He was smiling now, as he rose and held out his hand. Keilin took it, then an offered seat, then an offered cigar.

Cellioni said: 'I am very happy to see you, Mr. Keilin. It is kind of you to fly here from New York on such short notice.'

Keilin curved the corners of his lips down and made a tiny gesture with one hand, deprecating the whole business.

'And now,' continued Cellioni, 'I presume you would like an explanation of all this.'

'I wouldn't refuse one,' said Keilin.

'Unfortunately, it is difficult to know exactly how to explain. As Secretary of Information, my position is difficult. I must safeguard the security and well-being of Earth and, at the same time, observe our traditional freedom of the press. Naturally, and fortunately, we have no censorship, but just as naturally, there are times when we could almost wish we did have.'

'Is this,' asked Keilin, 'with reference to me? About censorship, I mean?'

Cellioni did not answer directly. Instead, he smiled again, slowly, and with a remarkable absence of joviality.

He said: 'You, Mr. Keilin, have one of the most widely heard and influential telecasts on the video. Therefore, you are of peculiar interest to the government.'

The time is mine,' said Keilin, stubbornly. 'I pay for it. I pay taxes on the income I derive from it. I adhere to all the common-law rulings on taboos. So I don't quite see of what interest I can be to the government.'

'Oh, you misunderstand me. It's my fault, I suppose, for not being clearer. You have committed no crime, broken no laws. I have only admiration for your journalistic ability. What I refer to is your editorial attitude at times.'

'With respect to what?'

'With respect,' said Cellioni, with a sudden harshness about his thin lips, 'to our policy toward the Outer Worlds.'

'My editorial attitude represents what I feel and think, Mr. Secretary.'

'I allow this. You have your right to your feelings and your thoughts. Yet it is injudicious to spread them about nightly to an audience of half a billion.'

'Injudicious, according to you, perhaps. But legal, according to anybody.'

'It is sometimes necessary to place good of country above a strict and selfish interpretation of legality.'

Keilin tapped his foot twice and frowned blackly.

'Look,' he said, 'put this frankly. What is it you want?'

The Secretary of Information spread his hands out before him. 'In a word - co-operation! Really, Mr. Keilin, we can't have you weakening the will of the people. Do you appreciate the position of Earth? Six billions, and a declining food supply! It is insupportable! And emigration is the only solution. No patriotic Earthman can fail to see the justice of our position. No reasonable human being anywhere can fail to see the justice of it.'

Keilin said: 'I agree with your premise that the population problem is serious, but emigration is not the only solution. In fact, emigration is the one sure way of hastening destruction.'

'Really? And why do you say that?'

'Because the Outer Worlds will not permit emigration, and you can force their hand by war only. And we cannot win a war.'

'Tell me,' said Cellioni softly, 'have you ever tried emigrating? It seems to me you could qualify. You are quite tall, rather light-haired, intelligent -'

The video-man flushed. He said, curtly: 'I have hay fever.'

'Well,' and the secretary smiled, 'then you must have good reason for disapproving their arbitrary genetic and racist policies.'

Keilin replied with heat: 'I won't be influenced by personal motives. I would disapprove their policies, if I qualified perfectly for emigration. But my disapproval would alter nothing. Their policies are their policies, and they can enforce them. Moreover, their policies have some reason even if wrong. Mankind is starting again on the Outer Worlds, and they - the ones who got there first - would like to eliminate some of the flaws of the human mechanism that have become obvious with time. A hay fever sufferer is a bad egg - genetically. A cancer prone even more so. Their prejudices against skin and hair colors are, of course, senseless, but I can grant that they are interested in uniformity and homogeneity. And as for Earth, we can do much even without the help of the Outer Worlds.'

'For instance, what?'

'Positronic robots and hydroponic farming should be introduced, and - most of all - birth control must be instituted. An intelligent birth control, that is, based on firm psychiatric principles intended to eliminate the psychotic trends, congenital infirmities -'

'As they do in the Outer Worlds -'

'Not at all. I have mentioned no racist principles. I talk only of mental and physical infirmities that are held in common by all ethnic and racial groups. And most of all, births must be held below deaths until a healthful equilibrium is reached.'

Cellioni said, grimly: 'We lack the industrial techniques and the resources to introduce a robot-hydroponic technology in anything less than five centuries. Furthermore, the traditions of Earth, as well as current ethical beliefs, forbid robot labor and false foods. Most of all, they forbid the slaughter of unborn children. Now, come, Keilin, we can't have you pouring this out over video. It won't work; it distracts the attention; it wakens the will.'

Keilin broke in, impatiently: 'Mr. Secretary, do you want war?'

'Do I want war? That is an impudent question.'

'Then, who are the policy-makers in the government who do want war? For instance, who is responsible for the calculated rumor of the Pacific Project?'

'The Pacific Project? And where did you hear of that?'

'My sources are my secret.'

'Then, I'll tell you. You heard of this Pacific Project from Moreanu of Aurora on his recent trip to Earth. We know more about you than you suppose, Mr. Keilin.'

'I believe that, but I do not admit that I received information from Moreanu. Why do you think I could get information from him? Is it because he was deliberately allowed to learn of this piece of trumpery?'

Trumpery?'

'Yes. I think Pacific Project is a fake. A fake meant to inspire confidence. I think the government plans to let the so-called secret leak out in order to strengthen its war policy. It is part of a war of nerves on Earth's own people, and it will be the ruin of Earth in the end.'

'And I will take this theory of mine to the people.'

'You will not, Mr. Keilin,' said Cellioni, quietly.

'I will.'

'Mr. Keilin, your friend, Ion Moreanu is having his troubles on Aurora, perhaps for being too friendly with you. Take care that you do not have equal trouble for being too friendly with him.'

'I'm not worried.' The video man laughed shortly, lunged to his feet and strode to the door.

***