Desperate Games

  ‘“If these galaxies are moving away from each other in this way today, it is clear that in a period before ours, they were closer together. If we go back far into the past, we will discover a body whose molecules have not yet been separated by great abysses of space. And if we go back even further in time, as far as our imagination will take us, we shall see these archipelagos very near to each other, pressed up close to each other, stars crashing against stars, atoms against atoms, in a universe which is strangely limited, with a remarkable concentration of matter, and of a density such that a cubic centimetre of this primitive magma could weigh some hundred million metric tons!

  ‘“In this way I attempted, by the use of suggestive images, to make the magic of our origins come alive again. It seems to me that no one can remain insensitive to the evocation of such phenomena. In fact no one breathed a word. This silence, which I interpreted as a sign of reverence, seemed to me to augur well, and, with my forehead bathed in sweat from my own emotion and from my efforts at communicating it to them, I was now convinced that the sublimation of interest predicted by Wells was being produced before my very eyes.

  ‘“I had taken them back in this way to the beginning of time. So I allowed myself to develop somewhat some of the theories which have been influenced by this hypothesis. I brought up Lemaître’s primitive atom, about which I quoted several phrases, suitable to encourage enthusiasm by virtue of its poetry, such as the following: ‘The evolution of the world can be compared to a firework that has just died out. A few red fuses, ashes and some puffs of smoke. Standing on a little bit of grit which has cooled down a little bit more, we watch suns gently fading away and try to reconstruct the vanished splendour of worlds being formed.’5 With this I noticed a kind of tremor in the amphitheatre, which managed to convince me that I had succeeded in stimulating their minds. So I mentioned briefly the improvements made by modern cosmologists which supported Lemaître’s hypothesis.

  ‘“After following the flow of time back to its source, I invited them to let themselves be carried along by it, to overtake it and direct their imagination towards the future. I showed them how galaxies were moving away from each other, more and more, faster and faster, so much so that the speed of this flight makes it impossible for us to receive the faintest signal from those galaxies which reach the final point: the speed of radiation. I pointed out to them that, in all probability, this had already happened to about ninety-nine per cent of galaxies, so that, even if techniques of astronomical observation had been perfected to an ideal degree, and even if our instruments lacked any defects, we could only observe one per cent of the total volume of the Universe, and this proportion was diminishing with each passing second. At this point I remained silent, feeling anxious myself at what I had evoked, as I wished them to be too when faced with the dramatic urgency of our situation: if we do not hurry, if science and technology do not progress by giant leaps, then we shall only be able to contemplate an infinitesimally small part of creation!

  ‘“Of course I related this expansion, this instability, to the brilliant ideas of Einstein and enabled them to perceive something of the majestic spatio-temporal edifice constructed by him, as well as the proliferation of theories based on his concepts. I concluded with a spectacular tableau of a pulsating universe, with contraction following dilation, until it returns to a state of phenomenal concentration, followed by a new explosion marking the origin of another period of time and giving birth to another cycle…

  ‘“The sighs of a mythical heart, the heart of Divinity!… The comparison is to be found in Poe’s Eureka, the last pages of which I read to them. Perhaps I should apologise, but this cosmological poem has always inspired intense emotion in me. This has not been weakened by the dreadful commentaries made on the topic of Poe’s work by asses and one she-ass, and which I tried hard to communicate to them. Basing his ideas on inaccurate observations of his time, and being ignorant of all Einstein’s theories and of the expansion of the universe, as well as invoking laws of physics which were partially false, and using a sequence of imperfect reasoning, by what magic spell could Poe have come to a conception of creation which seems probable today to some of our greatest scholars? I let them reflect on this paradox.

  ‘“I can assure you, my dear friend, that I did everything I could to inspire them a little with the passion that animates us. I finished with a final quotation, the words of Einstein himself, ‘The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.’

  ‘“This is what I did. I finished exhausted, but confident and full of hope. And yet…”’

  ‘So far,’ Betty commented, ‘I don’t see what makes you so sullen. It seems to me that his lecture was skilful, magisterial in the best sense of the word, imbued certainly with a certain mysticism, but we know Zarratoff: he has the soul of a poet. For the goal that we are pursuing, that does not seem to me to be a failing. What do you find fault with in it?’

  ‘Me? Nothing at all. Like you I consider his account to be excellent, even very fine. In fact I was enthusiastic about it from start to finish, although I knew the essential ideas in advance. As would many of our colleagues.’

  ‘But that would not have been the case for the others, would it?’

  ‘Finish reading,’ Fawell murmured, in a deeply despondent way.

  ‘“And yet, my dear friend,”’ continued Zarratoff, ‘“I have to report quite a painful incident, which left me with a rather unpleasant impression.

  ‘“I had left the amphitheatre, which was full to bursting, and where I had been received by applause, which, I can assure you, had nothing obligatory about it. Everyone looked at me with a bright expression. In two lectures, each three hours in length, I was pleased to have revived the atmosphere in the centre. I was even more hopeful when, half an hour later, after resting because I was out of breath, I had gone to the reception room, where I found a delegation of members of my audience. I had in fact told them that I would be there, ready to answer any questions that they might have for me.

  ‘“As I could not receive a large crowd, I asked them to collect their questions together and to send one or several delegates. There were about a dozen, who were probably representative of all the students. All seemed impatient to see me.

  ‘“I observed them closely, while congratulating them on their enthusiasm. As far as I could judge, they belonged to classes which were very different from those of the former society: workers, bosses, housewives, women of the world, ranging in age from sixteen to sixty. I rubbed my hands in appreciation of their diversity. Their faces seemed to me to be imbued with a fervour tinged with a kind of anxiety, which I attributed to mental tension due to being confronted by the new perspectives that I had shown them, and to the fear of letting some important detail escape them or of inadvertently going down the path of error…’”

  ‘I came to know that state of mind when I was a student,’ Betty commented.

  ‘Zarratoff knew it also. If he hadn’t known it, he wouldn’t have talked of it in that way. I have also known it, as have many others among us,’ Fawell said in a dull voice. ‘Even nowadays I sometimes spend sleepless nights, bothered by such anxiety. Continue.’

  ‘“The first to speak must have been about fifty years old. He had the vigorous manner of a man used to having responsibilities. In fact, as I found out later, he used to belong to the class of directors, and, even after the revolution, he was considered worthy of holding an important post. He had a clear, practical mind, and he has been very useful to us in coordinating transport between different remote regions.

  ‘“However he started to speak to me with the timidity of a young schoolboy.

  ‘“‘Master,’ he said, ‘my question is probably evidence of great ignorance, but… I would like to know.’

  ‘“At that point his voice trembled and he paused for a moment. I asked him to continue quite openly, saying that curiosity and the thirst for knowledge would absolve him of any kind of stupi
dity in advance. So he continued with greater confidence:

  ‘“‘It’s like this. It’s a question which has been worrying me for a long time and the answer to it is probably quite clear to you, Master. I’d like to know if the reigning planet…’

  ‘“‘The reigning planet?’ I interrupted, taken aback.

  ‘“‘Sometimes it’s called ruling,’ he said. ‘I would like to know if the influence of the ruling planet when it’s in the ascendant can be affected when it is in conjunction with one of the galaxies which fill the sky and which you sketched out in such a wonderful tableau.’

  ‘“I leave you to imagine, my dear friend, my concern, when, after a few moments of astonishment, I realised what he was thinking about: horoscopes and astrology. It was the only aspect of the subject which had fascinated him. I had no time to reply to him. There was already a woman, a woman this time from a humble background, who was pushing her way through the rows of people. She prostrated herself in front of me before nervously spreading out on the floor a sheet of paper covered with diagrams. She begged me to examine it and tell her if the horoscope of her birth was correct. She had had it made by a renowned astrologist, but she guessed, after having listened to me, that there must be more things in the heavens than astrologers were aware of, and that a scholar like me could predict her fate with greater certainty and in more detail.

  ‘“And all the others were in the same state of mind, that is to say that their brains were crammed full to bursting, infested with ‘houses’, ‘luminaries’, ‘ascendants’, ‘themes’ and with ‘signs’ of good or bad fortune. Horoscopes were the only topic which, without the word ever being mentioned, they considered worthy of deeper explanation by me. They all started talking at once, waving diagrams around and subjecting me to a mass of crazy and anxious questions concerning shameless tall stories with which charlatans used to nurture the hopes of the people in former times. They used these stories to acquire considerable influence over the masses, an influence which, my experience seems to prove, has not diminished since the scientific revolution. That was the reason for the bright expressions and the trembling that I had noticed. They were expecting me to complement or correct the predictions of sorcerers!

  ‘“I leave it to you, my dear friend, to interpret this incident in a suitable way. I am too disturbed this evening to do it myself.

  ‘“There are only a few things left for me to add. I tried to regain my calm and make them aware of their folly. I invoked the arguments which you know and which we know to be irrefutable. They listened to me politely, without interrupting me, but it was clear that I was gradually losing the prestige that my eloquence might have gained for me. Personally, as I became aware of the abyss that separated us, I did not feel very persuasive. When I stopped speaking, the man who had spoken first said to me, shaking his head:

  ‘“‘Anyway, such a person probably died in the third month of the year, as his horoscope predicted.’

  ‘“There was no point in citing calculations concerning probability to him. I finished by leaving the group and they withdrew with their heads down, leaving me disheartened…”’

  ‘And there you have it,’ said Fawell. ‘Do you understand now why you do not find me in a triumphant mood?’

  He seemed to be so confused that she avoided all criticism and tried to comfort him.

  ‘Don’t you think that perhaps diversions of this sort are necessary?’ she said.

  And she quoted some remarks by Kepler: ‘If someone had not had the credulous hope of being able to read the future in the heavens, would you have ever been wise enough to study astronomy for its own sake?’ But Fawell’s disappointment was so great that nothing was able to dispel his bad mood.

  ‘An abyss between them and us, is what Zarratoff wrote!’

  ‘It’s only one point of view though. Another sounding could yield a more encouraging result.’

  ‘I myself have made another sounding,’ said Fawell, becoming even grimmer. ‘I also gave a lecture. I chose a very broad topic: the structure and unity of matter. I don’t want to repeat what I said in my class to you, but I can assure you that, like Zarratoff, I called on all my resources to stimulate at least some interest, not to say passion… It was a classic class, but I tried to spice it up, showing them the great divisions in matter, molecules, atoms and finally its unity, matter being made up, in the final analysis, solely of particles which are completely alike… They understood the last point well enough, oh they understood it all right!

  ‘Again like Zarratoff I made myself available after the class. And like him, I was glad to see quite a large number come to me as a delegation. And do you know the one question which they put to me? All of them, the same one?’

  ‘Depressing, I’m sure.’

  ‘How does one go about making gold!’ Fawell yelled out. ‘Do you get it? Since, in the final analysis, all bodies are composed of the same materials, I must possess a simple recipe they could use, which would only require a retort and a stove, probably so that they could transmute pebbles from the beach or the stones that clutter up their gardens into gold!’

  Once again the psychologist tried to respond and to find some encouraging arguments:

  ‘That shows nevertheless that they had understood something about the unity of matter. In this case as well, perhaps the stage of superstition is necessary. I think that –’

  She was interrupted by a telephone ringing. It was Yranne calling the President from Beijing. Fawell listened for some time without interrupting. He made no comment when the other had finished.

  ‘Fine,’ he said simply. ‘We’ll discuss all that at a council meeting.’

  But when he turned towards Betty, his face had become even more hollow. He remained silent for a considerable length of time.

  ‘May I know how my former compatriots are behaving?’ the Chinese woman asked finally.

  ‘He dealt with statistics and probabilities,’ Fawell said slowly, ‘highlighting the role these notions play in both everyday life and in the Universe.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘In this case too, after the class, just one question was asked. Can you guess what it was?’

  ‘By looking at your expression and trying as best I can, I could at least guess the nature of it,’ Betty replied calmly.

  Fawell struck the table in a sudden burst of rage.

  ‘They asked him… they begged him on their knees to provide them with an infallible winning formula for roulette!’

  3.

  Several inspections carried out all over the world did not provide any more encouraging results, so that the education of humanity became a serious matter of worry and anxiety for the government of Earth. Soon it was to have other concerns, relating, paradoxically, to those people who appeared to want to get involved along the right lines, who appreciated the progress made by science for its true value, and who, realising that they had been freed from rough menial tasks, used this freedom for their own benefit and their leisure time to educate their mind. They were taking the very same path that the world administration was trying to open up. It was among these people that the symptoms of a strange illness were detected one day.

  The first person affected by it whom they could put under observation to study the illness was Nicolas Zarratoff, Fawell’s own son-in-law, who was now an experienced cosmonaut and had rejoiced at the scientific revolution and appreciated its effects. But before his case, two fatal accidents alerted the authorities. The two victims were also space pilots, and the conditions were identical and inexplicable. The first accident happened to a man named Jim Barley, when he was piloting his private plane while on leave. An apparently absurd conversation had taken place between him and the control tower of the airport where he was to land. Unfortunately this conversation had not been recorded and it seemed to be so incoherent that many suspected a memory lapse on the part of the employee who had reported it. According to him, Barley had announced that he was incapable of carrying out the lan
ding manoeuvres by himself, although his controls were working well and the visibility was perfect. The employee was incapable of specifying the reason, as the pilot’s feverish attempts at explanation were incomprehensible. The matter ended in tragedy. The aircraft suddenly seemed to go completely out of control and crashed on the ground. Barley’s dead body was found among the shapeless debris and the inquest yielded nothing.

  The WAO (World Astronautic Organisation) concluded that he must have suffered from a sudden illness, and nothing would have come of the affair if a second accident of the same nature had not occurred a few days later to another cosmonaut, while he was also piloting a tourist plane. Like Barley, he had started to make incoherent comments and died in similar circumstances. The nature of the illness which had attacked these unfortunate men baffled the WAO doctors, and none of the psychologists who were consulted could come to a satisfactory diagnosis. These two successive accidents had seemed sufficiently unusual for a confidential report on them to be sent to the government.

  Nicolas Zarratoff felt happy to be alive that morning, with the prospect of three months’ holiday which had just been granted to him. He had certainly earned it and he and Ruth were finally going to go on the long honeymoon journey which they had been planning for a long time. They had constantly had to put it off since their marriage due to the urgency of the missions which were entrusted to him.

  On coming out of his office where he had just received the good news, Nicolas jumped into his car and dashed off to his bungalow, without any thought of speed limits. He found Ruth cutting flowers in the garden and embraced her passionately.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ he exclaimed. ‘Three months.’