Читать книгу Fantastic Stories Presents the Fantastic Universe Super Pack #2 - William Logan - Страница 10

As the Vininese ship shot smoothly out into the night sky, Dirrul’s surface jet slashed back toward the Agronian capital. A synthetic tension, which he deliberately fed with nightmare improbabilities, kept him reasonably alert until he had safely returned the jet to its place in the compound. Then weariness engulfed him. Groggily he staggered to the pneumotube and within five minutes he was asleep in the small two-room worker’s apartment where he lived.

The insistent ping of the door visiscope woke him. Dirrul glanced at his wall clock and saw that it was still early morning. He had slept less than three hours. Swearing angrily he turned down the visiarm. Dr. Kramer’s serene aging white-bearded face was mirrored on the grey-tinted screen.

“Good morning, Edward,” Kramer said with excessive cheerfulness. “For a moment I was afraid I had missed you. I’ve brought a transcription of the lecture you missed yesterday.”

Dirrul swung out of bed and pushed the entry release. Soundlessly the thin metal door slid into the wall and the little professor bounced into the room. The door shot back into place.

“But you’re not dressed!” the professor exclaimed without the slightest regret. “I always supposed you Air-Command men had to report for work at eight.”

“Yesterday I was out on emergency call,” Dirrul said dully. “For twelve hours, so I’ve the morning off. I had planned to pound the pillow until—”

“Good! We can talk, then. I don’t have a class until ten and I always like to make the personal acquaintance of my students.” Dr. Kramer made himself comfortable in Dirrul’s Cloud-foam lounge, clasping his small, white hands over the little bulge of his belly. “Nice apartment you have here, Edward—excellent taste in furnishing.”

“You don’t mind if I shave and dress and have a bite of breakfast, Dr. Kramer?” Dirrul’s sarcasm was quite lost on the professor.

“Do, by all means,” Kramer said. “And you might order a pot of coffee for me.”

Dirrul touched a button and the bed rolled up into the wall—another and the gleaming metal shower-room slid open. He stripped and bathed, setting the aquadial so that his body was pounded by a sharp rain of icy water. When he snapped it off the massage arms shot out, rubbing him dry with soft, plastic puffs. He sprayed the newly patented No-Beard Mist on his face and, after waiting the required three seconds, wiped it off with a disposable fiber towel. The skin was pink and clean, refreshingly invigorated. When he took a fresh uniform out of the wall-press and put it on he felt very much himself again, scarcely annoyed by his lack of sleep.

He pushed the button and the bathroom rolled out of sight. The whole process had taken less than five minutes.

At his panel-control Dirrul dialed a sizable breakfast for himself and coffee for the professor. Before he could draw up chairs the grey-topped table had rolled from its wall slot, the steaming food containers fixed to it.

“The marvels of invention!” Dr. Kramer said. “When I was young we had nothing like this. Many times, Edward, I had to prepare my own meals—and mighty skimpy ones they were too, some of them. A young teacher in those days wasn’t paid very much.”

“You survived, Dr. Kramer,” Dirrul reminded him dryly. “A little work now and then wouldn’t hurt us, either.”

“That’s the old argument, Edward. How we frothed and stewed over it when this new system was in its infancy! That was before your time, of course.” Kramer poured a cup of coffee and after a thoughtful hesitation quietly took a slice of toast from Dirrul’s platter. “They said we’d create a race of helpless children—defenseless lazy softies. They said if the individual wasn’t forced to fight for his own survival, for the small comforts of life, he would die of boredom, drown initiative in luxury.”

Dr. Kramer smiled—and took another slice of toast. “Like so many of the terrifying predictions of the Cassandras none of it came to pass. Today we’re stronger and more vigorous than ever. Today we have more new inventions, more new discoveries, more fine philosophical insight than ever before in our entire history.

“Actually what we did was save time on the trivial routines so we could spend our work-potential where it mattered. After all, what was gained by a social system that forced me to spend so much of my energy feeding and housing and clothing myself? Weigh the loss against the greater contribution I might have made if I had spent the same time in research.”

“Why, yes, Dr. Kramer—you could have given us the Cloud-foam lounge a generation earlier,” Dirrul said bitterly, “or perhaps the Safe-sweet candy.”

Again his sarcasm lost its savor, for the professor simply beamed and said, “Possibly, if that had been my field of interest. As it happens I’m a psychologist specializing in emotive linguistics—the symbologies for conveying meanings.” The professor smiled.

“Our present vigor and strength, no doubt, is reflected in the sort of thing we do with all this extra time our gadgets give us—the scholarly research in the Arena or the Phonoview.”

“You’re being very uncritical, Edward. Under any social form a great majority of the people would spend everything on personal pleasures. Why not? Each generation produces only a few leaders—we simply recognize that fact and adjust to it.”

“But without the incentive of personal gain, Dr. Kramer . . . .”

The professor laughed uproariously. “Incentive! You amaze me, Edward. I haven’t heard the word used in just that context since I was a boy. You’re a throwback—an anachronism. You sound like one of the elderly prophets of doom. I thought the breed had died out generations ago.” The professor laughed again. “So our system creates no incentives. Tell me, Edward, why are you spending your Work-Equivs to take my night course?”

“Because, when I’ve passed enough university hours I can take the promotional test and become a full-fledged space-pilot.”

“And still you say there’s no incentive?”

“For myself, yes—but all of us ought to have the same kind of drive,” said Dirrul.

“Such a condition never existed, Edward. Always there have been a few to make the inventions and the discoveries, a few to create the new dreams and frame the new ideas. Our people are no different. Incentive comes from within the individual—it cannot be imposed from the outside.

“The poorest sort of incentive, therefore, is economic need. Our system provides all our people with the basic necessities for everyday living. Some few of us are content with these and never want anything else. But the great majority work to earn Work-Equivs, which they can spend as they please—on amusement, luxury, education or the races at the Arena.

“Whatever the goal, it is a personal goal, set by each individual for himself. It’s the only kind of incentive that makes any sense. Take yourself as an example—you spend your share of Work-Equivs on additional education because you want to become a space-pilot. By the time you’ve earned the promotion you’ll have lifted yourself to a position of leadership.

“As you are well aware the space-pilot is the politician—statesman is a better word—of the Planetary Union. Through his ingenuity, his skill with languages, his psychological understanding of diverse racial groups, he holds our planets and peoples together, in one union with a common social philosophy. Think how frustrating it would be if you could never move toward your goal, Edward, because everything you earned had to be spent on trivialities—food, clothing, a place to live.”

“All right,” said Eddie doubtfully, “I have an apartment given to me but it has to be here in a worker’s block. If our system provides for us all alike, as you imply, how is it you have accommodations in the Scientist’s Center? Why should you be set apart? Or the poets and writers? Or the space-pilots, for that matter?”

“But there’s no difference in the way we live, Edward. In general people who do similar work and have similar interests are happier if they share the same social environment. The average person, living in a worker’s block, would feel terribly out of place in a scientist’s center, just as I would develop terrific frustrations if I had to live with the mystics or the religious orders.”

Dirrul deftly snatched the last piece of toast as the professor reached for it. “I’ll dial some for you if you like,” he offered.

“Oh, no, Edward! I’m dieting, you see, and I like to think—well, as I’ve told you so often in class, we all practise self-deception of a sort. Usually it’s harmless—and almost always we symbolize it in words. For me the symbol is diet.

“I set up a specialized definition and convince myself that I am dieting if I never directly order fattening food. That gives me an escape hatch. If food is offered to me or if it happens to—ah—to fall into my hands, I can take it and still keep a clear conscience.”

“Perhaps you practise more self-deception than you know, Dr. Kramer,” said Eddie. “For instance, all your fine words about the strength and vitality of our new system—when I was a boy we licked the Vininese Confederacy. We couldn’t do it today.”

“That’s a matter of opinion. We’re at peace now and we’ll remain so.”

“Only because we have the Nuclear Beams. And look how we’ve botched that mess! Our scientists gave the process to the Vininese in order to patch together a peace when we could have destroyed their civilization completely.”

“And our own too—with the weight of such a crime on our group conscience. There’s one thing you still must learn, Edward—scientific progress is made by the sharing of ideas, not the concealment of them. We build the future upon the truths of the past and the present. If some of those truths are hidden away we create falsely on utterly false foundations.”

Dr. Kramer pulled a manila envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table, pushing back his chair. “I must go, Edward; these are the notes on my lecture. As I told you before, I really came here for something else. I wanted to talk to you, to get to understand you better. I think I’ve learned a great deal.”

The little professor was no longer smiling and the gentle touch of banter was gone from his voice. Dirrul felt a creeping fear rise within him. How much had he unconsciously revealed? How many of his own beliefs had Dr. Kramer been able to read between the lines?

Knowing them, would he guess Dirrul’s connection with the Movement? The professor’s bland naiveté could be the mask of a police informer. Dirrul shivered, remembering the sudden punishment that had overtaken Glenna and Hurd.

At the door Dr. Kramer paused and said, “I’m entertaining two or three of the university faculty this evening, Edward. They’ve read some of the papers you have written for my class. I’d like to have you meet them. My apartment—eight-thirty.”

It was a command rather than an invitation. Dirrul accepted.