The Gods Themselves

Chapter 23

  11

  Barron Neville stared at her, quite speechless for a while. She looked calmly back at him. Her window panorama had been changed again. One of . them now showed the Earth, a little more than half full.

  Finally, he said, "Why?"

  She said, "It was an accident, really, I saw the point and I was too enthusiastic not to speak. I should have told you days ago but I was afraid your reaction would be exactly what it is. "

  "So he knows. You fool!"

  She frowned. "What does he know? Only what he would have guessed sooner or later - that I'm not really a tourist guide - that I'm your Intuitionist. An Intuitionist who knows no mathematics, for heaven's sake. So what if he knows that? What does it matter if I have intuition? How many times have you told me that my intuition has no value till it is backed by mathematical rigor and experimental observation? How many times have you told me that the most compelling intuition could be wrong? Well, then, what value will he place on mere Intuitionism?"

  Neville grew white, but Selene couldn't tell whether that was out of anger or apprehension. He said, "You're different. Hasn't your intuition always proved right? When you were sure of it?"

  "Ah, but he doesn't know that, does he?"

  "He'll guess it. He'll see Gottstein. "

  "What will he tell Gottstein? He still has1 no idea of what we're really after. "

  "Doesn't he?"

  "No. " She had stood up, walked away. Now she turned to him and shouted, "No! It's cheap of you to imply that I would betray you and the rest. If you don't accept my integrity then accept my common sense. There's no point in telling them. What's the use of it to them, or to us, if we're all going to be destroyed?"

  "Oh, please, Selene!" Neville waved his hand in disgust "Not that. "

  "No. You listen. He talked to me and described his work. You hide me like a secret weapon. You tell me that I'm more valuable than any instrument or any ordinary scientist. You play your games of conspiracy, insisting that everyone must continue to think me a tourist guide and nothing more so that my great talents will always be available to the Lunarites. To you. And what do you accomplish?"

  "We have you, haven't we? How long do you suppose you would have remained free, if they - "

  "You keep saying things nice that But who's been imprisoned? Who's been stopped? Where is the "evidence of the great conspiracy you see all around you? The Earth-men keep you and your team from their large instruments much more because you goad them into it than out of any malice on their part. And that's done us good, rather than harm, since it's forced us to invent other instruments that are more subtle. "

  "Based on your theoretical insight, Selene. "

  Selene smiled. "I know. Ben was very complimentary about them. "

  "You and your Ben. " What the hell do you want with that miserable Earthie?"

  "He's an Immigrant. And what I want is information. Do you give me any? You're so damned afraid 111 be caught, you don't dare let me be seen talking to any physicist; only you, and you're my - For that reason only, probably. "

  "Now, Selene. " He tried to manage a soothing tone, but there was far too much impatience to it.

  "No, I don't care about that really. You've told me I have this one task and I've tried to concentrate on it and sometimes I think I have it, mathematics or not. I can visualize it; the kind of thing that must be done - and then it slips away. But what's the use of it, when the Pump will destroy us all anyway . . . Haven't I told you I distrusted the exchange of field intensities?"

  Neville said, "I'll ask you again. Are you ready to tell me that the Pump will destroy us? Never mind might, never mind 'could'; never mind anything but 'will. ' "

  Selene shook her head angrily. "I can't. It's so marginal. I can't say it will. But isn't a simple 'might' sufficient in such a case?"

  "Oh, Lord. "

  "Don't turn up your eyes. Don't sneer! You've never tested the matter. I told you how it might be tested. "

  "You were never this worried about it till you started listening to this Earthie of yours. "

  "He's an Immigrant. Aren't you going to test it?"

  "No! I told you your suggestions were impractical. You're not an experimentalist, and what looks good in your mind doesn't necessarily work in the real world of instruments, of randomness, and of uncertainty. "

  "The so-called real world of your laboratory. " Her face was flushed and angry and she held her clenched fists at chin-level. "You waste so much time trying to get a vacuum good enough - There's a vacuum up there, up there on the surface where I'm pointing, with temperatures that, at times, are halfway down toward absolute zero. Why don't you try experiments on the surface?"

  "It would have been useless. "

  "How do you know? You just won't try. Ben Denison tried. He took the trouble to devise a system he could use on the surface and he set it up when he went to inspect the Solar batteries. He wanted you to come and you wouldn't. Do you remember? It was a very simple thing, something even I could describe to you now that it's been described to me. He ran it at day-temperatures and again at night-temperatures and that was enough to guide him to a new line of research with the Pionizer. "

  "How simple you make it sound. "

  "How simple it is. Once he found out I was an Intuitionist, he talked to me as you never did. He explained his reasons for thinking that the strengthening of the strong nuclear interaction is indeed accumulating catastrophically in the neighborhood of Earth. It will only be a few years before the Sun explodes and sends the strengthening, in ripples - "

  "No, no, no, no" shouted Neville. "I've seen his results and I'm not impressed. "

  "You've seen them?"

  "Yes, of course. Do you suppose I let him work in our laboratories without making sure I know what he's doing? I've seen his results and they're worth nothing. He deals with tiny deviations that are well within the experimental error. If he wants to believe that those deviations have significance and if you want to believe them, go ahead. But no amount of belief will make them have that significance if, in fact, they don't. "

  "What do you want to believe, Barron?"

  "I want the truth. "

  "But haven't you decided in advance what the truth must be by your own gospel? You want the Pump Station of the Moon, don't you, so that you need have nothing to do with the surface; and anything that might prevent that is not the truth - by definition. "

  "I won't argue with you. I want the Pump Station, and even more - I want the other. One's no good without the other. Are you sure you haven't - "

  "I haven't. "

  "Will you?"

  Selene whirled on him again, her feet tapping rapidly on the ground in such a way as to keep her bobbing in the air to the tune of an angry clatter.

  "I won't tell him anything," she said, "but I must have more information. You have no information for me, but he may have; or he may get it with the experiments you won't do. I've got to talk to him and find out what he is going to find out. If you get between him and me, you'll never have what you want. And you needn't fear his getting it before I do. He's too used to Earth thinking; he won't make that last step. I will. "

  "All right. And don't forget the difference between Earth and Moon, either. This is your world; you have no other. This man, Denison, this Ben, this Immigrant, having come from Earth to the Moon, can, if he chooses, return from Moon to Earth. You can never go to the Earth; never. You are a Lunarite forever. "

  "A Moon-maiden," said Selene, derisively.

  "No maiden," said Neville. "Though you may have to wait a long while before I confirm the matter once again. "

  She seemed unmoved at that.

  He said, "And about this big danger of explosion. If the risk involved in changing the basic constants of a Universe is so great, why haven't the para-men, who are so far advanced beyond us in technology, stopped Pumping?"

  And he left.

  She faced t
he closed door with bunched jaw muscles. Then she said, "Because conditions are different for them and for us, you incredible jerk. " But she was speaking to herself; he was gone.

  She kicked the lever that let down her bed, threw herself into it and seethed. How much closer was she now to the real object for which Barren and those others had now been aiming for years?

  No closer.

  Energy! Everyone searched for energy! The magic word! The cornucopia! The one key to universal plenty! . . . And yet energy wasn't all.

  If one found energy, one could find the other, too. If one found the key to energy, the key to the other would be obvious. She knew the key to the other would be obvious if she could but grasp some subtle point that would appear obvious the moment it was grasped. (Good heavens, she had been so infected by Barren's chronic suspicion that even in her thoughts she was calling it "the other. ")

  No Earthman would get that subtle point because no Earthman had reason to look for it.

  Ben Denison would find it for her, then, without finding it for himself.

  Except that - If the Universe was to be destroyed, what did anything matter?

  12

  Denison tried to beat down his self-consciousness. Time and again, he made a groping motion as though to hitch upward the pants he wasn't wearing. He wore only sandals and the barest of briefs, which were uncomfortably tight And, of course, he carried the blanket

  Selene, who was similarly accoutered, laughed. "Now, Ben, there's nothing wrong with your bare body, barring a certain flabbiness. It's perfectly in fashion here. In fact, take off your briefs if they're binding you. "

  "No!" muttered Denison. He shifted the blanket so that it draped over his abdomen and she snatched it from him.

  She said, "Now give me that thing. What kind of a Lunarite will you make if you bring your Earth puritanism here? You know that prudery is only the other side of prurience. The words are even on the same page in the dictionary. "

  "I have to get used to it, Selene. "

  "You might start by looking at me once in awhile, without having your glance slide off me as though I were coated with oil. You look at other women quite efficiently, I notice. "

  "If I look at you - "

  "Then you'll seem too interested and you'll be embarrassed. But if you look hard, you'll get used to it, and you'll stop noticing. Look, I'll stand still and you stare. Ill take off my briefs. "

  Denison groaned, "Selene, there are people all around and you're making intolerable fun of me. Please keep walking and let me get used to the situation. "

  "All right, but I hope you notice the people who pass us don't look at us. "

  "They don't look at you. They look at me all right. They've probably never seen so old-looking and ill-shaped a person. "

  "They probably haven't," agreed Selene, cheerfully, "but they'll just have to get used to it. "

  Denison walked on in misery, conscious of every gray hair on his chest and of every quiver of his paunch. It was only when the passageway thinned out and the people passing them were fewer in number that he began to feel a certain relief.

  He looked about him curiously now, not as aware of Selene's conical breasts as he had been, nor of her smooth thighs. The corridor seemed endless.

  "How far have we come?" he asked.

  "Are you tired?" Selene was contrite. "We could have taken a scooter. I forget you're from Earth. "

  "I should hope you do. Isn't that the ideal for an immigrant? I'm not the least bit tired. Hardly the least bit tired at any rate. What I am is a little cold. "

  "Purely your imagination, Ben," said Selene, firmly. "You just think you ought to feel cold because so much of you is bare. Put it out of your head. "

  "Easy to say," he sighed. "I'm walking well, I hope. "

  "Very well. I'll have you kangarooing yet. "

  "And participating in glider races down the surface slopes. Remember, I'm moderately advanced in years. But really, how far have we come?"

  "Two miles, I should judge. "

  "Good Lord! How many miles of corridors are there altogether?"

  "I'm afraid I don't know. The residential corridors make up comparatively little of the total. There are the mining corridors, the geological ones, the industrial, the mycological . . . I'm sure there must be several hundred miles altogether. "

  "Do you have maps?"

  "Of course there are maps. We can't work blind. "

  "I mean you, personally. "

  "Well, no, not with me, but I don't need maps for this area; it's quite familiar to me. I used to wander about here as a child. These are old corridors. Most of the new corridors - and we average two or three miles of new corridors a year, I think - are in the north. I couldn't work my way through them, without a map, for untold sums. Maybe not even with a map. "

  "Where are we heading?"

  "I promised you an unusual sight - no, not me, so don't say it - and you'll have it. It's the Moon's most unusual mine and it's completely off the ordinary tourist trails. "

  "Don't tell me you've got diamonds on the Moon?"

  "Better than that. "

  The corridor walls were unfinished here - gray rock, dimly but adequately lit by patches of electroluminescence. The temperature was comfortable and at a steady mildness, with ventilation so gently effective there was no sensation of wind. It was hard to tell here that a couple of hundred feet above was a surface subjected to alternate frying and freezing as the Sun came and went on its grand biweekly swing from horizon to horizon and then underneath and back.

  "Is all this airtight?" asked Denison, suddenly uncomfortably aware that he was not far below the bottom of an ocean of vacuum that extended upward through all infinity.

  "Oh, yes. Those walls are impervious. They're all booby-trapped, too. If the air pressure drops as much as ten per cent in any section of the corridors there is such a hooting and howling from sirens as you have never heard and such a flashing of arrows and blazing of signs directing you to safety as you have never seen. "

  "How often does this happen?"

  "Not often. I don't think anyone has been killed through air-lack for at least five years. " Then, with sudden defensiveness, "You have natural catastrophes on Earth. A big quake or a tidal wave can kill thousands. "

  "No argument, Selene. " He threw up his hands. "I surrender. "

  "All right," she said. "I didn't mean to get excited. . . . Do you hear that?"

  She stopped, in an attitude of listening.

  Denison listened, too, and shook his head. Suddenly, he looked around. "It's so quiet. Where is everybody? Are you sure we're not lost?"

  "This isn't a natural cavern with unknown passageways. You have those on Earth, haven't you? I've seen photographs. "

  "Yes, most of them are limestone caves, formed by water. That certainly can't be the case of the Moon, can it?"

  "So we can't be lost," said Selene, smiling. "If we're alone, put it down to superstition. "

  "To what?" Denison looked startled and his face creased in an expression of disbelief.

  "Don't do that," she said. "You get all lined. That's right. Smooth out. You look much better than you did when you first arrived, you know. That's low gravity and exercise. "

  "And trying to keep up with nude young ladies who have an uncommon amount of off-time and an uncommon lack of better things "to do than to go on busmen's holidays. "

  "Now you're treating me like a tourist guide again, and I'm not nude. "

  "At that, even nudity is less frightening than Intuitionism. . . . But what's this about superstition?"

  "Not really superstition, I suppose, but most of the people of the city tend to stay away from this part of the corridor-complex. "

  "But why?"

  "Because of what I'm going to show you. " They were walking again. "Hear it now?"

  She stopped and Denison listened anxiously. He said, "You mean that small tapping sou
nd? Tap - tap - Is that what you mean?"

  She ran ahead in slow, loping strides with the slow-motion movement of the Lunarite in unhurried flight. He followed her, attempting to ape the gait.

  "Here - here - "

  Denison's eye followed Selene's eagerly pointing finger. "Good Lord," he said. "Where's it coming from?"

  There was a drip of what was clearly water. A slow dripping, with each drip striking a small ceramic trough that led into the rock wall.

  "From the rocks. We do have water on the Moon, you know. Most of it we can bake out of gypsum; enough for our purposes, since we conserve it pretty well. "

  "I know. I know. I've never yet been able to manage one complete shower. How you people manage to stay clean I don't know. "

  "I told you. First, wet yourself. Then turn off the water and smear just a little detergent on you. You rub it - Oh, Ben, I'm not going through it yet again. And there's nothing on the Moon to get you all that dirty anyway . . . But that's not what we're talking about. In one or two places there are actually water deposits, usually as ice near the surface in a mountain shadow. If we locate it, it drips out. This one has been dripping since the corridor was first driven through, and that was eight years ago. "

  "But why the superstition?"

  "Well, obviously, water is the great material resource on which the Moon depends. We drink it, wash with it, grow our food with it, make our oxygen with it, keep everything going with it. Free water can't help but get a lot of respect. Once this drip was discovered, plans to extend the tunnels in this direction were abandoned till it stopped. The corridor walls were even left unfinished. "

  "That sounds like superstition right there. "

  "Well - a kind of awe, maybe. It wasn't expected to last for more than a few months; such drips never do. Well, after this one had passed its first anniversary, it began to seem eternal. In fact, that's what it's called: 'The Eternal. ' You'll even find it marked that way on the maps. Naturally people have come to attach importance to it; a feeling that if it stops it will mean some sort of bad fortune. "

  Denison laughed.

  Selene said, warmly, "No one really believes it, but everyone part-believes it. You see, it's not really eternal and it must stop some time. As a matter of fact, the rate of drip is only about a third of what it was when it was first discovered, so that it is slowly drying. I imagine people feel that if it happened to stop when they were actually here, they would share in the bad fortune. At least, that's the rational way of explaining their reluctance to come here. "

  "I take it that you don't believe this. "

  "Whether I believe it or not isn't the point. You see I'm quite certain that it won't stop sharply enough for anyone to be able to take the blame. It will just drip slower and slower and slower and no one will ever be able to pinpoint the exact time when it stopped. So why worry?"

  "I agree with you. "

  "I do, however," she said, making the transition smoothly, "have other worries, and I'd like to discuss them with you while we're alone. " She spread out the blanket and sat on it, cross-legged.

  "Which is why you really brought me here?" He dropped to hip and elbow, facing her.

  She said, "See, you can look at me easily now. You're getting used to me. . . . And, really, there were surely times on Earth when near nudity wasn't something to be exclaimed over. "

  "Times and places," agreed Denison, "but not since the passing of the Crisis. In my lifetime - "

  "Well, on the Moon, do as the Lunarites do is a good enough guide for behavior. "

  "Are you going to tell me why you really brought me here? Or shall I suspect you of planning seduction?"

  "I could carry through seduction quite comfortably at home, thank you. This is different The surface would have been best, but getting ready to go out on the surface would have attracted a great deal of attention. Coming here didn't, and this place is the only spot in town where we can be reasonably safe from interruption. " She hesitated.

  "Well?" said Denison.

  "Barren is angry. Very angry, in fact. "

  "I'm not surprised. I warned you he would be if you told him that I knew you were an Intuitionist. Why did you feel it so necessary to tell him?"

  "Because it is difficult to keep things for long from my - companion. Probably, though, he doesn't consider me that any longer. "

  "I'm sorry. "

  "Oh, it was turning sour anyway. It's lasted long enough. What bothers me more - much more - is that he violently refuses to accept your interpretation of the Pionizer experiments you ran after the surface observations. "

  "I told you the way it would be. "

  "He said he had seen your results,"

  "He glanced at them and grunted. "

  "It's rather disillusioning. Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"

  "As long as possible. Sometimes longer. "

  "What about you?"

  "You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out. my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics. "

  "No! I mean it!"

  "Well, I suspect Neville told you that the data I had gathered were not significant beyond the margin of error, which makes them doubtful, and that's true enough . . . And yet I prefer to believe they have the meaning I expected them to have to begin with. "

  "Just because you want to believe that?"

  "Not just because. Look at it this way. Suppose there is no harm in the Pump, but that I insist on thinking there is harm. In that case, I will turn out to be a fool and my scientific reputation will be badly damaged. But I am a fool in the eyes of the people who count, and I have no scientific reputation. "

  "Why is that, Ben? You've hinted around the tale several times. Can't you tell me the whole story?"

  "You'd be surprised how little there is to tell. At the age of twenty-five I was still such a child that I had to amuse myself by insulting a fool for no reason other than that he was a fool. Since his folly was not his fault, I was the greater fool to do it. My insult drove him to heights he couldn't possibly have scaled otherwise - "

  "You're talking of Hallam?"

  "Yes, of course. And as he rose, I fell. And eventually, it dropped me to - the Moon. "

  "Is that so bad?"

  "No, I rather think it's good. So let's say he did me a favor, long-way round . . . And let's get back to what I'm talking about. I'vejust explained that if I believe the Pump to be harmful and am wrong, I lose nothing. On the other hand, if I believe the Pump to be harmless and am wrong, I will be helping to destroy the world. To be sure, I've lived most of my life already and I suppose I can argue myself into believing that I have no great cause to love humanity. However, only a few people have hurt me, and if I hurt everyone in return that is unconscionable usury.

  "Then, too, if you'd rather have a less noble reason, Selene, consider my daughter. Just before I left for the Moon, she had 'applied for permission to have a child. She'll probably get it and before long I'll be - if you don't mind my saying so - a grandfather. Somehow I'd like to see my grandchild have a normal life expectancy. So I prefer to believe the Pump is dangerous and to act on that belief. "

  Selene said, intensely, "But here's' my point. Is the Pump dangerous or is it not? I mean, the truth, and not what anyone wants to believe. "

  "I should ask you that. You're the Intuitionist What does your intuition say?"

  "But that's what bothers me, Ben. I can't make it really certain either way. I tend to feel the Pump is harmful, but maybe that's because I want to believe that. "

  "All right. Maybe you do. Why?"

  Selene smiled ruefully and shrugged her shoulders. "It would be fun for Barron to be wrong. When he thinks he's certain, he's so vituperatively certain. "

  "I know. You want to see his face when he's forced to back down. I'm well aware of how in
tense such a desire can be. For instance, if the Pump were dangerous and I could prove it, I might conceivably be hailed as the savior of humanity, and yet I swear that I'd be more interested in the look on Hallam's face. I'm not proud of that feeling so I suspect that what I'll do is insist on an equal share of the credit with Lamont, who deserves it after all, and confine my pleasure to watching Lamont's face when he watches Hallam's face. The pettishness will then be one place removed. . . . But I'm beginning to speak nonsense. . . . Selene?"

  "Yes, Ben?"

  "When did you find out you were an Intuitionist?"

  "I don't quite know. "

  "You took physics in college, I imagine. "

  "Oh, yes. Some math, too, but I was never good at that Come to think of it, I wasn't particularly good in physics, either. I used to guess the answers when I was desperate; you know, guess what I was supposed to do to get the right answers. Very often, it worked and then I would be asked to explain why I had done what I did and I couldn't do that very well. They suspected me of cheating but could never prove it"

  "They didn't suspect Intuitionism?"

  "I don't think so. But then, I didn't either. Until - well, one of my first sex-mates was a physicist. In fact, he was the father of my child, assuming he really supplied the sperm-sample. He had a physics problem and he told me about it when we were lying in bed afterward, just to have something to talk about, I suppose. And I said, 'You know what it sounds like to me?' and told him. He tried it just for the fun of it, he said, and it worked. In fact, that was the first step to the Pionizer, which you said was much better than the proton synchrotron. "

  "You mean that was your idea?" Denison put his finger under the dripping water and paused as he was about to put it in his mouth. "Is this water safe?"

  "It's perfectly sterile," said Selene, "and it goes into the general reservoir for treatment. It's saturated with sulfates, carbonates, and a few other items, however. You won't like the taste. "

  Denison rubbed his finger on his briefs. "You invented the Pionizer?"