* * *
Finally Connor could no longer remain silent about it. But by now allconversations had to be broached by tactful beating around the bush sohe began by saying he had decided to take a lower level job in themetropolis.
Rhoda was not surprised. "I know. A good idea but I think you shouldwait a while longer and do something else first."
That made him suspicious. "Are you developing a new kind of unblockableESP? How'd you know?"
"No," she laughed. "Some day we will maybe and people will use it betterthis time. But right now I'm just going by what I see. You've beenstudying Max and I knew you were bound to get restless." She becamethoughtful. "What you really want to know, though, is what I've beendoing in the city. Well, at first I did very little. I kept ending up intheatres where we Suspendeds can go. That gave a little relief. Butsince Ted's letter it's been different. I finally got up the courage tosee Dr. Newbridge."
"Newbridge!"
"Connor, he's a great man. You should see him too."
"My mind may have smaller scope outside the System but what's left of itisn't cracking, Rhoda." Working himself into a spasm of righteous rage,he stalked out into the garden and tried to convince himself he wascalmly studying the rose bushes' growth. But Sheila and Tony Williamscame down the lane that skirted the garden and, as their eyes movedhaughtily past him, his rage shifted its focus. He came back into thehouse and remained in sullen silence.
Rhoda went on as if there had been no interruption. "I still say Dr.Newbridge is a great man. He dropped out of the System of his own freewill and that certainly took courage!"
"He willingly gave up his advantages and privileges?"
"Yes. And he's explained why to me. He felt it was destroying everySubscriber's ability to think and that it could not last. Some day wewould be without anything to do our thinking and he wanted out."
Connor sat down and stared thoughtfully out the window. Max had justlumbered into the garden and, having unscrewed one hand to replace itwith a flexible spade, was starting on the evening schedule for turningover the soil at the base of the plants. He would go methodically downone flower bed, then up the next one, until all had been worked over,then would start all over again unless ordered to stop. "Are we to endup the same way?" Connor shuddered. He slapped his knee. "All right,I'll go with you tomorrow. I've got to see what he's like--a man who'dvoluntarily surrender ninety percent of his powers!"
* * * * *
The next morning they rode into the city together and went to the HarkerBuilding. It was in an area dense with non-telepaths each one showingthat telltale cleft of anxiety in his forehead but briskly going abouthis business as if anxiety were actually a liveable quality. Newbridgehad the same look but there was a nonetheless reassuring ease to the wayhe greeted them. He was tall and white-haired and his face frequentlyassumed an abstracted look as if his mind were reaching far away.
"You've come here," he said, "for two reasons. The first isdissatisfaction with your life. More precisely, you're dissatisfied withyour attitude toward life but you wouldn't be willing to put it thatway, not yet. Secondly, you want to know why anyone would willinglyleave the System."
Connor leaned back in his chair. "That'll do for a starter."
"Right. Well, there aren't many anomalies like me but we do exist. Mostpeople outside the System are there because they've been Suspended forsupposed infractions, or they've been put out through guilt byassociation, or because they were born into a family already in thatcondition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood I wastrained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potentialof my mind into the System. Like every other paraNormal, I received myeducation by tapping Central for contact with information centers andother minds. But I was a fluke." His dark blue eyes twinkled."Biological units are never so standardized that _all_ of them fallunder any system that can be devised. I functioned in this System, true,but I could imagine my mind existing outside, could see my functioning_from the outside_. This is terribly rare--most people are limited tothe functions which sustain them. They experience nothing else exceptwhen circumstances force them to. I, though, could see the System wasnot all-powerful."
"Not all-powerful!" Connor exploded. "It got rid of me awfully easily."
His wife tried to calm him. "Listen, dear, then decide."
"You're surviving as a pariah, Mr. Newman, aren't you? Your wife tellsme you've even started to study robot controls, valuable knowledge forthe future and personally satisfying now. Millions of people do surviveas outsiders, as do the planetary colonists who only have limited accessso far to social telepathy. The System has built into it defensesagainst Subscribers who lack confidence in it--if it didn't it wouldcollapse. But people _in_ the System are not forced to remain there.They can _will_ themselves out any time they close their minds to it, asI did. But they don't want to will themselves out of it--you certainlydidn't--and their comfortable inertia keeps everything going. I thinkyou have to know a little about its history, a history which never wouldhave interested you if you were still comfortably inside it."
He slowly outlined the way it had developed. First those uncertain stepstoward understanding the universally latent powers of telepathy, thengrowing chaos as each individual spent most of his time fighting offunwanted messages. After a period of desperate discomfort a few greatminds, made superhuman by their ability to tap each others' resources,had devised the Central System Switchboard. Only living units,delicately poised between rigid order and sheer chaos, could receivemental messages but this problem had been solved by the molecularbiologists with their synthesized, self-replicating axons, vastlyelongated and cunningly intertwined by the billions. These responded toevery properly-modulated thought wave passing through them and made thesame careful sortings as a human cell absorbing matter from the world.Then, to make certain this central mind would never become chaotic,there was programmed into it an automatic rejection of all scepticalchallenges.
"That was the highest moment of our race," Newbridge sighed. "We hadharnessed infinite complexities to our needs. But the success was toocomplete. Ever since then humanity has become more and more dependent onwhat was to be essentially a tool and nothing more. Each generationbecame lazier and there's no one alive who can keep this Central Systemin proper working order." He leaned forward to emphasize his point. "Yousee, it's very slowly breaking down. There's a steady accretion ofinefficiency mutations in the axons and that's why more and moreswitching mistakes are being made--as in your case."
* * *
Connor was dazed by it all. "What's going to be the upshot, I mean,_how_ is it going to break down?"
Newbridge threw up his hands. "I don't know--it's probably a long wayoff anyway. I guess the most likely thing is that more and more errorswill accumulate and plenty of people will be Suspended just becauseCentral is developing irrational quirks. Maybe the critical social massfor change will exist only when more are outside the System than inside.I suspect when that happens we'll be able to return to _direct_telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are alwaysblocked." A buzzing sound came out of a small black box on the doctor'sdesk, startling Connor who in his executive days had received all suchsignals directly in his head. "Well, I've another patient waiting sothis will have to be the end of our chat."
Connor and his wife exchanged glances. He said, "I'd like to come back.I'll probably have a twenty-hour week so I'll be in town a few days aweek."
"More than welcome to come again," Newbridge grinned. "Just make thearrangements with Miss Richards, my nurse."
When they were in the street Rhoda asked, "Well, what do you think now?"
"I don't know what to think yet--but I do feel better. Rhoda, would youmind going home alone? I think I'll find a job right away."
"Mind?" she laughed. "It's wonderful news!"
After he left her he wandered around the city awhile. In his paraNormaldays he had never noticed them but it
certainly was true that there werea lot of Suspendeds about. He studied some of them as he went along,trying to fathom their likes and dislikes by the way they moved andtheir expressions. But, unlike the paraNormals, each was different andit was impossible to see deeply into them.
Then, as he rounded a corner, he was suddenly face to face with his newenemy. A large flat park stood before him and there in the middle was ahundred-story tower of smooth seamless material, the home of the CentralSystem's brain. There were smaller towers at many points in the worldbut this was the