The Instant of Now by Irving E. Cox (8 ebook reader txt) 📖

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.

III

As soon as the professor had gone his fear vanished. What he had said to Dr. Kramer gave away no secrets and, in any case, he was crediting the professor with a perception he did not have. Ever since first joining the Movement, when he was still in school, Dirrul had taken such pains to conceal his motives that it would have required a good deal more than Dr. Kramer's clumsy prying to reveal them.

He had deliberately patterned his attitudes and habits upon a composite average, even to a mild and starry-eyed criticism of the system which was more or less expected from the ambitious young men of the Air-command.

Dr. Kramer's ecstatic praise of the system was the typical emotional reaction of the older generation. The professor may actually have been convinced of the truth of his own fuzzy propaganda. It was that sort of blind faith which still held the Planetary Union together.

Before returning to the Air-Command base at noon, Dirrul sought out Paul Sorgel and reported that Glenna and Hurd were safely on their way to Vinin. Apologetically, he mentioned Dr. Kramer's invitation, expecting to elicit Sorgel's scorn. Instead the Vininese agent was enthusiastic.

"Wonderful, Eddie!" he said. "Engineer it so they'll ask you back. We've never got one of our people in with the older science crowd before. Feel them out—we might pick up some converts. I won't need you at the next few meetings of the Movement—they'll be largely reorganizational, you know. I've been reading over Glenna's notes on the Plan. With one or two modifications we should be able to carry it out."

At eight-thirty that evening Dirrul was admitted to Dr. Kramer's apartment. He was neither overwhelmed by the professor's excessive courtesy nor impressed by the other guests. They were from the faculty of the Advanced Air University, elderly, respected and distinguished, names known for a generation everywhere in the Planetary Union.

To them, Edward Dirrul was merely a curiosity, a live specimen mounted for analysis. He had criticised their system. They intended to wring out the strands of his motivation, classify them, speculate and theorize upon them—and perhaps, ultimately, do the whole thing up as a monograph.

Dirrul knew why Kramer had selected him for study rather than any of the current crop of university students who held similar views. A product of the educational philosophy of the Planetary Union, Dirrul was thoroughly adjusted and decidedly aware of both his own abilities and shortcomings.

He was, first of all, gifted in the use of abstractions and generalities. In rare combination with this flair he had superior mechanical intelligence and a talent for expressive verbalization. He dealt easily in the subtle skills of logic. If he set his mind to it, he could erect absolute proofs of diametrically opposed truths and few minds could detect the delicately concealed flaws in the reasoning.

On the negative side of the scale was Dirrul's complete lack of psycho-biological intelligence, or a sense of scientific semantics. Neither to him seemed important. He missed them not at all and resented the legal requirements that forced him to take Dr. Kramer's course before he could qualify as a space-pilot.

The papers he had written for the professor were beautifully constructed patterns of logic, cast in well-turned phrases. They had clarified the criticism which others put inarticulately. It was the precision of his argument that disturbed Dr. Kramer and his faculty friends.

Dirrul was amused as the distinguished scientists skillfully manipulated the conversation to create counter-arguments opposing his. It was a game played in abstractions, a technique of which Dirrul was an instinctive master. Apparently the scientists found some sort of excitement in the game, since on succeeding evenings Dirrul was swamped with invitations from other faculty members—so many, in fact, that he had to neglect the serious work of the Movement. When he complained to Paul Sorgel, the Vininese agent was delighted.

"We can get along without you for awhile, Eddie," Sorgel said. "You're doing something much more important. You have a real in with the science crowd, and you've got them on the run because your arguments make sense. Every doubt you sow in their minds now will make our work just that much easier when the proper time comes."

Occasionally Dirrul had an uneasy feeling that he was making no real progress at all, that when he talked to the scientists he was a dancing puppet dangling on invisible strings. It seemed impossible that the scientists of the