The Project Gutenberg eBook of The right side of the tracks
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Title: The right side of the tracks
Author: Albert Teichner
Illustrator: George Schelling
Release date: December 5, 2023 [eBook #72338]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE TRACKS ***
_The Nodarians weren't planning a revolt.
Nor had the planet been captured by aliens.
If they were obstinately silent, it was
simply because they now lived on ..._
THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE TRACKS
By ALBERT TEICHNER
Illustrated by SCHELLING
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories May 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
For the last week they had been hovering a half-million miles out from
the Terra-scale planet and now all fifty men aboard the _Probe_ were
agreed that it was time to land and investigate the place at closer
hand. Even Dr. Stern, the perennial pessimist, felt the inhabitants
still looked human through the electroscope. While hopelessly blurred
by such distance magnification, these two-legged, two-armed beings
showed nothing dangerously different from men on any other member
planet of the Galactic Glia.
But why did these seeming fellow creatures want to be by themselves in
total isolation?
Every schoolboy knows that each of the ten thousand human planets
signals all the others once each galactic hour--even if there is no
information to exchange except the carrier signal itself. Just as each
neuron in a brain maintains some electrical contact with every other.
From this infinite openness of pathways, the schoolboy will explain
to you, comes the adaptability of both the individual mind and human
civilization in general, the ability to concentrate everything on
whatever problem is at hand.
Yet here was Nodar refusing to answer the universal signals for years
at a time. There was something menacing about this non-conformity and
Supreme Council had carefully considered all possibilities before
dispatching the _Probe_. These had boiled down to a painful set of
alternatives: either an alien species, commencing the building of an
empire, had seized the planet; _or_ the Nodarians, turned primitive for
some unknown reason, were hiding behind the wall of silence to mount
their own attack on the rest of the human universe.
"Alien seizure, my foot!" Commander Linder told the rest of the crew
now. "Those are men down there, men working up some anti-social
mischief we truly civilized people can't even imagine."
"Mischief? We just don't know that it is," Stern sighed through his
grey, brush mustache. "Do we, Commander?"
"It can't be anything good," Linder snapped. The other officers nodded
their agreement.
"Suppose they've become indifferent," Stern persisted, "and just want
to be left by themselves?"
Linder gave a sour laugh as he moved down the catwalk, throwing one
communication circuit after another to ON position. "I imagine they're
going to play very coy before we wangle an answer out of them--but not
because they're indifferent, Stern. It's impossible for people to be
indifferent to their fellows--cooperation or hate, those are the two
possibilities, and Nodar alone refuses to cooperate. _Why_ should they
be indifferent? _What_ could they have to develop beside the universe
of people around them?"
"I don't know," Stern conceded. "I don't even think my explanation's
the likely one--yours is--but we do have to consider everything."
"In--dif--fe--rent," Linder repeated, provoking laughter from his crew.
He whirled his bulky frame around with the usual surprising ease and
snapped a receiving screen on. "Look at it again, look at what we've
been picking up from them the last six days. I think they've known
we're up here all along--deliberately pulling wool over our eyes."
* * * * *
To the tune of running squeaks and rumbles unshaped colors flowed
across the screen mixed with equally shapeless flickers of black and
white. "Certainly looks deliberate," said young Crawford who was
Linder's second in command but not ordinarily one of the yesman chorus.
"Doctor, as our Chief Semanticist, do you get any message at all out of
that stuff?"
"No," he conceded again.
"The lack of a message," said the Commander, "there's your only
message. A slap in our faces and a kick in our teeth!" His jaw
tightened. "Even if it means our finish, we've got to go down there and
find out what we can. Council will be receiving all our information on
the fastest hyperspace beam unless and until Nodar cuts us off. Now
let's get the job done!"
Stern was the first to applaud and every man there followed suit. They
had spent a gruelling three months at speeds far beyond that of light
and were impatient to be finished with the assignment. Their eyes
gleamed with barely-suppressed anger as Linder started calling Nodar.
"We are from Supreme Council. We wish to land. Our mission is charity
but we insist on the right to land."
He had just begun to repeat the message when the prompt response came
through, ungarbled. "Land any time. You have been out there one week,
three hours, eighteen minutes, three seconds and never bothered to call
us! You could have come in at any time."
"They have known all along!" There was a great outburst of indignation.
"Those meatheads making fun of us!"
Linder held down the local sender at OFF while he turned to Stern. "A
good sign for our safety, though, heh?"
"Yes," Stern agreed emphatically. "If they wanted to pull us into a
trap they wouldn't be annoying us at this stage. They probably won't
throw any obstacles in our way when we leave."
Linder nodded and pointed at Barnes. "Your team will keep
communications open and we'll get data back to Terra as long as we can."
The stubby man saluted smartly and left with his five aides for Message
Center.
"Go down to 18,000, sir?" Crawford asked. "18.9 should give us the best
descent trajectory."
"First I'll notify them. We're dealing with a touchy bunch. An
unannounced hyperdrive boom might send them into some nasty defense
scramble." He spoke into his wrist microphone. "Hello, Nodar. Hello,
Nodar. This is Commander Linder speaking, Linder of the _Probe_. We are
coming down within the next two hours. This will necessitate a brief
return to hyperspace and there--."
"We will anticipate the visual boom," chuckled a deep voice behind
which interweaving lines of squeaks were running. "Our calculation for
your best trajectory in normal space is for you to come back to it at
18.3846 thousand miles. You will then be square on our landing beam.
Good luck."
"Maybe they've forgotten their galactic good manners," Stern smiled,
"but not their navigation."
The Commander disregarded him. Shifting from normal space and back was
always physiologically disruptive, if only slightly so each time, and
every long voyager, according to his specific makeup, was allotted a
limited number of such shifts before being retired from the service.
A shame to use any of it up on such a short hop but from now on this
diplomatic transaction had to be handled rapidly, so rapidly that Nodar
could not anticipate every move.
He pressed the field-shift button.
* * * * *
A few minutes later they were back in normal space, coasting on Nodar's
landing beam. "Doesn't make sense," Stern insisted. "The beam's
perfectly clear yet every other signal we've picked up is a complete
garble."
"I told you--they were just throwing sand in our eyes."
"But Barnes says the garbles were all ground-to-ground signals,
thousands of different ones and none for us. They still know standard
Galactese when they speak directly to us."
The _Probe_ was down to 14 thousand, moving smoothly, and the Commander
sympathetically patted the semanticist's shoulder. "There's no call on
your specialty, that's what's worrying you. Mustn't go introspective on
us now, eh?"
"I'm not sure I mustn't, sir," he stood firm. "But I won't."
"Good enough. In the final analysis the doing's what counts, I always
say, not the thinking."
He leaned over the navigation screen, propping himself on his two
stiffly outstretched arms, and Stern knew he was no longer there for
Linder, not while the Commander concentrated on the problem of landing
the _Probe_. Stern moved along the catwalk past the open doorway of the
Message Center to the curving permaquartz window from which the descent
could be studied. As he watched Nodar's features rise toward him,
first silver blue, then breaking into broad continents of green and
tan and brown with brilliant clusters of metropolitan lights here and
there on the night side, he kept wondering about all those meaningless
picture signals they had intercepted. On Terra there had been a
dangerous cult of non-communication way back in the late twentieth
century, at the very time man's greatest era was dawning. But that,
everyone realized today, was due to neurotic fear of the grandeur--and
responsibilities--ahead. Could a whole planet still go neurotic?
It was a terrible question and he brooded on it, wondering how ruthless
the Council's treatment must be to bring this civilization back to
normalcy. Certainly it was a question to keep from Linder as long as
possible; his tendency toward prompt and decisive action had to be
checked as much as possible.
Then they were landing, the anti-gravity jets letting the _Probe_
sink slowly into the waiting cradle until it stood still against the
usual manscape of one- and two-hundred story buildings. "Stern to the
bridge," Linder called on the intercom. "You'd better be part of the
landing delegation--just in case they really are in symbol trouble."
"Thank you, sir!" Stern replied, grateful, and hurried to the bridge.
There were eight men in this first group to leave the craft. They
started across the vast and empty checkerboard area leading from the
gantry to the sparkling Reception Center building. At least in one
respect, despite three decades of increasingly erratic behavior, Nodar
was following standard procedure; interstellar spaceports always were
laid out in huge black and white squares. From the distance which was
emphasized by this linear perspective a solitary figure was coming
toward them square by square.
Stern was the first to pinpoint the thing making the official greeter's
walk so peculiar. His arms, instead of moving to the rhythm of his
advancing body, were swinging back and forth at separate rates of
speed. As the figure came closer, the Commander muttered: "It looks as
if he's playing some kind of gymnastic game by himself. I don't think
he cares whether we're here or not--a fine greeting, I must say!"
Then they could see the smiling (or was it smiling?) face. "Something
odd about his eyes too," Crawford said.
"No, the eyes are all right," Barnes insisted. "He's anatomically
normal but you got that impression because only one side of his face is
smiling and the other's kind of expressionless, almost bored!"
He was still striding toward them, a handsome man well over seven feet
as planetary hospitality officials were supposed to be, and his left
hand, the more-rapidly swinging one, was making elaborate arabesques in
the air.
"Crazy habit," said the Commander, "never seen the likes of that
before."
"The eyes _are_ peculiar," Stern said in a low voice to the rest of the
group, "and I'll tell you why. Every once in a while they blink out of
step with each other."
"No," said Barnes, "I don't see anything like that. There--they just
blinked together. And there, together ag--no, I'm not sure this time!"
* * * * *
But Barnes withdrew his aggressive stare and fell silent as the
Nodarian came closer. Dressed in the same sheath garments as the
visitors, he was now beaming at them on both sides of his face. "We are
glad to welcome ancient brothers. My given name is Jackson," he said
in a deep, full voice and extended the right hand to Linder who was
resplendent in the gold sash of Space Commander, while his other hand
continued to play gracefully up and around and down and under and up,
moulding air to instantly vanishing shapes.
Linder, a little dubious, accepted the greeting. "We have been eager to
visit here. Contact has been so infrequent and Glia's Supreme Council
has wondered--." He stopped because Jackson's eyes had drifted away.
The man seemed to be listening either to some vigorous mathemusic that
had started up on the main building's PA system or some other music,
much more languid, coming from another direction. "I said, Greeter
Jackson, that contact has been so infrequent and--."
"Oh, I heard everything you said," the Nodarian nodded patiently, still
not bothering to focus his gaze on him.
The Commander fumed at the indignity but remained silent. Stern hastily
filled the gap. "I'm official semanticist for the expedition," he said,
himself disconcerted by the brief flicker of something like disdain at
one corner of Jackson's smile. "Well, I can see my services in that
capacity won't be essential here--." "--certainly not," Barnes boomed.
"--but I would like to say we have come here principally to ascertain
whether you are in any difficulties which the combined resources of
Glia's Council might help you face."
"_We_ in any difficulties!" Jackson laughed. "We need no other planet's
help. How could _you_ help _us_?"
"I hardly call that a polite greeting!" Linder exploded. "Certainly not
an appreciative one. Galactic practice states you people should signal
every hour on a universal pulse line. Out of ten thousand settled
zones yours is the only one in violation. And now you receive us with
arrogance and--and--hand-circle waving!"
The left hand's movements slowed down but did not stop while Jackson's
steel blue eyes settled, unnervingly blinkless now, on them. "No, I
guess you're not ready for it," he cryptically announced. The smile
came back, even warmer than before, but they were still a little shaken
as he bade them follow. "One pupil," Stern whispered to the Commander,
"one pupil was more dilated than the other!"
"Don't I have enough problems without your fantasies?" Linder came back
crossly. "Cut it out."
"You heard what the Commander said," Barnes joined in, more menacing
than his superior.
Stern considered the Message Center Chief with contempt. The
broad-beamed runt was basking in his usual reflected-glory routine,
cultivating the Commander's favor by encouraging his natural
impulsiveness. _A fine example of cooperation we can set for anyone
else!_ he thought bitterly.
But, like the others, he was quickly distracted from personal problems
by what became apparent as soon as they entered Reception's building.
Inside, it had a rundown appearance, nothing you could precisely
put your finger on but the paint seemed slightly faded, and chairs,
lockers, tables, in fact all objects, had a very slightly worn
appearance. This was something no other planet permitted to happen;
Reception was the place travellers saw first and every normal planet
wanted to make a good initial impression.
The people, though, there was the real reason for feeling that
everything was sloppy, lax. Groups of officials and onlookers were
milling about the great center hall area but they hardly seemed to
notice their guests. Many of them had listening devices in their
ears and their eyes wandered about even more outrageously than did
Jackson's while everywhere there were hands making pointless gestures.
"Look at that computer!" Linder snorted, beside himself with disgust.
"It must be half out!"
* * * * *
The eight men gaped at the machine, standard spaceport size, that
covered one wall. Here and there dial plates had fallen away, revealing
disrupted wire circuits. "In the name of Council," Linder snapped, "I'm
telling you to get that Thinker fixed."
"Oh, it's in good enough shape," Jackson yawned. "We don't need the
_whole_ thing functioning."
"And I'm ordering you to need the whole thing! No wonder we haven't
been receiving regular signals."
People within earshot were grinning and turning away. "Commander--"
"Linder. L-I--"
"No need to spell _anything_ out for us ever, sir. As I said, we don't
need the whole thing. We could fix it easily enough any time the
necessity arose. But it never will again, I assure you."
"Let's go to your Central Headquarters so I can settle this with
someone in authority!"
"There isn't anybody in authority." He considered the Commander's
puzzled expression. "Because everyone is capable of authority."
Barnes roared with humorless laughter and waved his hand at a few men
gaping toward a wall. "These characters capable of authority?"
A few briefly swung eyes toward them, then back to the wall. "You
people certainly are not ready," Jackson sighed. "Well, come along
anyway, I'll show you Central Headquarters, such as it is now."
They followed him into the street, gawking at an area robot control
computer on the central island. It, too, had sections of broken plating
with unattached wires crazily dangling.
"Some kind of robot revolt?" Crawford whispered to Stern.
"Looks like it could be," Stern agreed. "You can't adequately control
thinking robots without area computers mediating their activities. But
still--there's never been a robot revolt. Maybe something else peculiar
explains--"
Jackson who had been listening to music on an ear set turned around and
said, "Of course you can control them without area computers. I mean,
_we_ can. Anyway we don't need so many robots now."
Barnes was about to register another vehement protest but his chief
shook his head and whispered, "No use, there's something the matter
with this one. I'll have him disciplined as soon as I talk to the top
people."
"Why are you turning this into a diplomatic prestige match?" Stern
broke in, his voice even lower than the others. "There's something
more important going on here. Didn't you notice what those types in
Reception were gawking at?"
"Us!" Barnes snorted.
"No, there was some kind of smear of light flowing across the wall and
every once in a while I thought I saw one or two words!"
"For the last time, Stern," and this time Linder's voice was loud
enough to echo from a building across the narrowing street, "last time,
Stern, no more morbid talk--more morbid talk--." The words, coming
back like a kind of self-mockery, threw him off his verbal stride and
he fell silent, satisfying himself with the chance to glare at the
semanticist. Who the devil needed a symbol specialist on a mission like
this anyway?
* * * * *
They turned into a huge plaza where the echo phenomenon ceased, but
the same sloppiness attracted their attention as had been the case at
the spaceport. The pavement approach to Nodar's Central Headquarters
was evenly laid out but, wherever repairs had been made, there was
no sign of an attempt to cover the patches up and maintain pleasing
visual symmetry. "There'll have to be a Glia Expeditionary Force,"
Linder muttered, unable to remain silent in the face of such deliberate
disorganization. "They're suffering from some weird disease. They'll
need all the help every planet can send."
At this Jackson, who had not seemed to be listening, turned around and
gave them all the most icy glance they had ever encountered. Then he
nodded his head into an angelic smile. Linder, refusing to be cowed,
strode to the insolent greeter's side and entered the building ahead
of him. A few seconds later he whirled around and came back to the
other seven who by now were just about to step into the place. "They've
made some kind of movie madhouse of their planetary headquarters!" he
muttered, stunned. "Come and see for yourselves."
They did. The hall they entered was monumentally vast like all
planetary centers, to express the majesty and prestige of its function.
It was partially darkened and hundreds of men and women were lounging
about on chairs and sofas, talking to each other while looking at the
wall at one end of the building. This wall was covered for several
hundred yards with blobs rapidly sinking toward the floor and similar
patches reappearing near the ceiling while words, mathematical symbols,
three-dimensional color patterns and other disconnected symbols
streamed in and out of the confusion to add the final touch of chaos.
Many of the viewers were also eating and here and there were even young
couples necking as they watched the wall.
Once in a while somebody seemed to look straight at the party that had
entered but the glance was always brief. "This is the limit," Barnes
said. "Commander, Council prestige is at stake here."
"No, let's try to stay calm," Stern insisted, "we're surrounded by
potentially hostile people and--"
"Are you afraid?" Barnes taunted him.
"You know that's not it," the taller man came back. "I just think we
ought to try to find some sense to all this."
"I think you _are_ afraid," Linder broke in. "Fine analysis jobs our
psychology people are doing these days! They're supposed to weed out
every fearmonger _before_ a hyperspace team takes off." He leaned
toward Stern, all his frustrations finally achieving a point of focus.
"You'll never get another expedition if we make it back. Get this
straight--my job isn't primarily to protect our hides. It's to make
obvious to our hosts that Glia Council is supreme everywhere, the one,
ultimate institution for maintaining stability throughout the Galaxy."
Jackson, for the first time, was giving _all_ of his attention to
them. "You have a complaint, Commander?" he said. "Why not address it
to me? Don't worry about being violently treated. We _want_ you to get
back to Terra with the news."
Arms akimbo, Linder faced the alien unflinchingly. "Space voyagers
don't worry about their personal safety. I demand," his voice rose to
a shout that reverberated unpleasantly through the soaring vault, "I
demand we get the respect, the total attention, due to a delegation
from Glia. We are not here in search of violence and you know it. Glia
missions have always been peaceful and to help our fellows. But there
is such a thing as carrying matters too far and you Nodarians are
threatening to do it with your disrespect for what we represent!"
They were receiving many more glances, all filled with distaste, from
members of the audience. But the glances remained brief and Barnes
shouted in an equally stentorian voice, "We demand your attention!
Contact must be resumed!"
Now some shouts echoed back at them. "You're boring us!" "Stop your
yawnmaking!" "Nothing worse than an inferior level of intelligence!"
Jackson, never taking his hypnotic gaze from his guests, gracefully
waved his hands and the Nodarians fell silent. Many of them returned
to their former activities but about fifteen formed a circle about the
visitors. "We are agreed?" the greeter said to his compatriots. They
all nodded.
"Good." He turned to Linder and Barnes. "As I said before to you,
you're really not ready yet for what we are hoping to tell you and we
have our own work to continue, work that will never menace anyone. Some
day, in fact, gratitude will ring from one end of the Galaxy to the
other."
"But I don't see," Stern wondered aloud, "why you have to withdraw from
contact with all the other planets if your plans are so innocuous."
"At this point," Jackson smiled, "it doesn't matter one way or the
other so we have not bothered. Our isolation did minimize the danger of
interference. We are not afraid of contact--we just don't need it now."
"Isn't that a rather selfish attitude?"
"Not at all. We're working to something which will, as I said, widen
the scope of everyone everywhere. We don't threaten you and you
_cannot_ threaten us."
"Keep out of this, Stern." The Commander moved closer to the other man.
"As for you, Jackson, I view this ingathering of your friends as a kind
of threat."
Jackson grinned. "Yes, slightly. Your manners as a guest have
been very bad. You have been childishly annoyed by what you cannot
understand and you will be childishly treated, all of you except
the man who has been talking a little more sensibly to me." With
that he easily picked the Commander up, fell back into a chair and
turned Linder over to give him a few sharp whacks. While Stern looked
on helplessly, others grabbed Barnes and the rest, in each case
administering a brief spanking. Even as the Nodarians spanked away most
of them continued to look toward the movie wall for a further supply of
irrationality.
A minute later the red-faced visitors were set back on their feet while
most of their mild assailants walked away, each laughing on one side of
his face or the other. Jackson held two empty palms toward them. "You
see--nothing else. You are free to go."
Linder struggled to reassert his dignity. "This isn't the end of the
matter."
"Of course not, Commander. Some day we'll reestablish the contact you
so ardently desire. Very peacefully too."
"Council will not wait _that_ long," Linder said over his shoulder as
he stalked away.
* * * * *
They returned to the ship in silence and when those who had remained
on board demanded to know what had happened Linder insisted they be
told nothing. "The matter," he said ominously, "will be settled when we
reach Terra. Stern, you're to keep silent too. Council is going to be
very interested in finding out why you received such favored treatment."
"But, Commander, I think I have a slight idea what this is all about--"
"Not interested in your ideas," Linder said angrily, striding away.
"Tell them to Council."
"I don't have the equipment in my cabin to work the analysis out."
"Silence!" Linder had turned at the door of Stern's cabin and was
glaring at him. "I don't want to hear a word from you the rest of this
voyage."
Stern sighed and calmly sat down at his desk to make some preliminary
calculations. It would probably work out all right; after a few days
in hyperspace Linder would come to him, more or less his old congenial
self, and this prohibition would be quickly forgotten.
But it did not work out that way. Every time Stern started a
conversation with the Commander or Barnes they stared unresponsively at
him and even Crawford sometimes backed away, trying to exchange as few
words as possible.
One day Linder approached the permaquartz window to find Stern, deep
in thought, muttering to himself some ancient rhyme about _Patty
cake, patty cake, baker man_. Oblivious to everything else about him,
Stern was holding his right hand above his head and his left close to
his stomach. The right hand, palm downward was moving in a clockwise
direction while the other went anti-clockwise, but at the words _Baker
man_ the movement of both hands was abruptly reversed. For a while
Linder watched these reversals, sometimes inaccurately changed into
both clockwise or both anti-clockwise movements. Finally he said
"Hmmph!" and strode away, leaving Stern standing there in confusion at
discovering he had been observed.
Following this embarrassing episode, Stern tried several times to
explain what he had been doing but was perfunctorily rejected in each
attempt. The days hung heavily as more and more crew members, deciding
to play it safe, imitated their chief and treated him like a pariah.
Most even refused to exchange brief comments about the _Probe's_
navigational progress across the Galaxy, the spaceman's polite
equivalent of the landman's time-killing rehashes of the weather.
Eventually Crawford alone was left among those indifferent to Linder's
wrath and Barnes' prying.
* * * * *
"It's an utterly ridiculous situation," Stern protested one day when
Crawford came by.
"I know it."
"What's he going to accuse me of when we reach Terra--secret
communication with the enemy?"
"Practically. You'll be tried on suspicion of that possibility."
"And acquitted of it. He'll look plain silly after the hearings."
"I suspect that too. But don't forget he's been made to look very
silly--a grown man getting spanked!"
"You went through the same indignity and still managed to be
philosophical enough to talk to me."
"Stern, _you_ didn't have to be philosophical at all. Frankly, even I
feel puzzled by their discriminating against the rest of us like that."
Stern shrugged. "I think they realized I already had a tiny inkling
of what was up while the rest of you, Linder and Barnes especially,
were arrogantly rubbing them the wrong way. You see, if there's any
condescending to be done, they're the ones who've earned the privilege
now."
Crawford's brow wrinkled thoughtfully. "You _do_ have some kind of
inkling!" He considered the portable electromagnetic projector at
Stern's elbow. "You were working that before I came in, weren't you?"
The older man strummed the arm of his chair. "It's not good enough
for the final proof. I need the main projector in the Commander's
quarters." He slammed the arm with sudden vehemence. "I've had
enough--he's going to listen to me before it's too late for him! He's
too good a spaceman to ruin his career the way he probably will if the
hearing against me gets going. They'll put him down for an obstructive
old fool and never let him make a solar system run again!"
Crawford considered him for a long second. "You're really serious,
aren't you? What makes you so sure you could convince him?"
"I only suspect I can. But I'll need the projector for it."
"Well, I still don't see how, Stern. You ought to hear him talking
about finding you playing some kind of kid's game, moving your hands
like crazy. What do I say if he brings that up again?"
"All right." Stern rose from his chair, placed his left hand
horizontally above his head, his right vertically against his stomach,
and started reciting the nonsense words. Each time he came to _baker
man_, he changed the rotational direction of one or both hands. Then
he reversed the placement of the hands themselves. Unsmiling, after
about a dozen changes, he said: "Now you try it, Crawford. No, I'm not
kidding around. Every time I reach _baker_ there'll be a change. If I
say _left baker man_ only your left will reverse its rotation. Or I may
say _right baker man_. Or I may not indicate a hand and then you'll
reverse rotation for both. Then when I say _change baker man_, put
the right hand where the left is and vice versa and continue the same
rotation as before the command--that is, if the right hand was above
your head, going clockwise, when I say _change_, your left hand, as
soon as it's shifted above your head, will turn clockwise."
Crawford hesitantly got up, crowding the little cabin until Stern sat
down. He held his hands just as Stern had at the start of the exercise.
"Makes me feel a little silly," he grinned, rolling his eyes upward to
the raised hand.
"Maybe it is in itself--but not in its implications. Okay, _Patty cake,
patty cake, baker man_. And now _Patty cake, patty cake, left baker
man_. And _Patty cake, patty cake, change baker man!_"
As the last instruction was given, Crawford, hopelessly tangled,
flailed his arms about. "Can't keep them turning in the right
direction!" Annoyed with himself, he stopped altogether. "Let's start
again. I'll get it yet."
"No, I think the point's been made. After a while you might learn to
do it right but it would take practice."
"A matter of coordination, isn't it?" Stern nodded. "Then those
hand-wrigglings of the Nodarians were actually purposeful exercises."
"Right. And now that they've mastered really complex maneuvers, the
hand-wrigglings are probably games, too, a part of play."
"Why should they have bothered at all with something like that?"
"Because it's one tiny part of a much wider set of disciplines. They
have made themselves _totally_ ambidextrous, not a trace of left- or
right-handedness left. Not just physical exercise and disciplines,
though, _all_ processes dealing with attention are involved."
Crawford's eyes widened. "That would mean both halves of the brain are
_equally_ used! They might be able to do twice the thinking we do."
"No, my friend, the difference is much greater because it has gone
far beyond questions of handedness. Just tell the Commander what I've
told you. And say the change probably extends to the very nature of
consciousness itself but I'll need the best projector to prove that."
Crawford bewilderedly considered his two hands. "Complete control--can
you beat that! The Commander'll have to listen all right."
* * * * *
After he was gone, though, Stern, gloomy and impatient, wondered
whether the younger man's optimism was justified. Suppose the Commander
refused and he had to wait more than three months, cooped up and in
coventry, before he could find out whether he was right? This project
had turned out to be one of psychology rather than semantics but
everything, absolutely everything, would be affected if he--.
The intercom speaker grated in response to someone's breath. "Stern to
Commander's quarters on the double!" shouted Linder.
Grinning with relief, he jumped up, at the same time unlocking a reel
of magnetic tape from the projector housing. He hurried along the
catwalk to the bow where the Commander was waiting, scowl and all.
"No time for apologetic chit-chat," Linder snapped. "Crawford here has
spoken to me and I'm interested. Not convinced, just interested. What
do you propose doing?"
"I need the projector to test out my wider conclusions, sir."
"You have one in your cabin, don't you? Your inventory statement should
show you do."
"It can't project a reel at slow enough speed, sir. It wasn't designed
for the kind of analysis I'm suggesting."
"Oh," he muttered half-mockingly, glancing toward Barnes, "so you have
a reel with you?"
"Yes, and several more back in the cabin. They're blur pictures,
garbles we picked up when we were hovering above Nodar."
"You're wasting the Commander's valuable time," Barnes shouted. "All
nonsense if you ask me!"
"Only because you have a one-tracked mind." Stern laughed at his own
remark. "That may turn out to be very funny in the next few minutes."
"Get on with it, Stern, before I change _my_ mind," ordered the
Commander.
"Yes, sir!"
He quickly slipped the reel onto the projector and, setting it for a
very slow speed, turned the machine on. The screen showed the usual
Nodarian television blur.
"There you are," Barnes said, "a complete waste of time!"
Disregarding him, Stern twisted the speed dial into slower and
slower positions; all the while watching the screen. Suddenly, as
projection speed came down to six percent of the speed at which it had
originally been received, they all gasped. They seemed to be looking
at the performance of some kind of drama with perfectly normal human
characters but the figures were sufficiently transparent for another
set of characters with another distinctive background to be seen behind
them and these seemed to be acting out a separate drama. All the while
equally transparent complex equations, charts and diagrams were pouring
across the screen.
"That's what _we_ find to be a blur!" observed Stern.
"They speed up their picture signal during transmission," Linder said,
"and slow it down at the receiving end." He stopped, rubbing his chin
thoughtfully. "No, that can't be it. In the Reception Center Building
and at their Central, too, they were looking _directly_ at such blurs!"
"Exactly, sir. They can _see_ the components of what we find a blur--if
we unscrambled the sound track squeaks we'd undoubtedly find the same
thing there. The question is, _How can they do it?_ and the answer is
very frightening--and encouraging."
"You said something about a change of consciousness."
"A radical change. They've been developing it during their isolation
period and there's no reason why they won't teach us when the
preparatory period's over. They're developing a special kind of inward
power that would make it silly for them to want primitive control over
other men. _They're_ the next stage in _our_ evolution."
"ESP!" Barnes broke in. "They sensed our antagonism so they humiliated
us."
* * * * *
"No, they _saw_ your antagonism." Stern snapped off the machine. "They
saw it because their powers of direct observation are so complete,
catching every slightest, revealing movement of the face. Look,
gentlemen, what have been the evolutionary stages until now? First,
self-perpetuating and replicating crystals. Then conditioned-reflex
life, followed by the growth of consciousness which in turn gave
rise to the development of social consciousness. For the last few
centuries we've been in this phase and it has given us the power to
spread across the Galaxy and assure one common level of humanity
everywhere. Individual and social consciousness interacting--what, we
have wondered, would be the next stage to arise from it? But we have
done everything to prevent the next stage because we feared any one
planet developing along unique lines, lines that might end in a threat
to the rest of us. Nodar deliberately isolated itself to be temporarily
unique."
"What kind of consciousness could there be besides individual and
social as we know them?" Crawford wondered uneasily.
"Nodarian--and if you had it your ten billion brain cells could store
up so much knowledge you wouldn't need thinking machines, just purely
physical robots!"
"Let's get down to cases," Linder said, for once politely restrained in
his impatience.
"All right, Commander, here's a case. You're standing at the entrance
of a darkened room which contains a thousand objects. A light flicks on
and off, barely revealing the room's contents. Then you are asked to
describe as much of the crowded room as you can remember seeing in that
brief flash. Your description covers only a small percentage of the
room's contents. The percentage may increase with practice but it will
still be small."
"But haven't you really seen more than that?" Crawford protested.
"Neurosurgery--"
"Certainly," Stern agreed. "If the neuro-surgeon manages to touch
precisely the right point in your brain while you're under a local
anaesthetic, you'll start describing details of that room you had not
realized you had seen. That's unconscious knowledge and it's much
vaster than what you consciously acquire. Still though, you find that,
even with this additional description, you've only covered a small
percentage of the facts about that room. Now, if you're permitted
to look into such a mystery room for, say, five minutes, you have
a chance to move your eyes from point to point, to become aware of
more things--and the neuro-surgeon's work will show your unconscious
knowledge has also grown from longer viewing. Conscious and unconscious
knowledge feed each other."
"I can just barely follow you now," Linder protested. "This is getting
awfully complicated."
"Because we're dealing with an awfully complicated--and
important--phenomenon. I'll get to the big point in just a moment but,
first, one more case--a little simpler to follow, I hope. You enter a
well-lighted room. In one corner two men are seated, playing chess. In
another corner two men are repairing a machine. When you look at the
chess players the machine repairers are barely visible in the corner of
your eye. If you concentrate on the chess situation, you learn close to
nothing about the repair work. And when you concentrate on the repair
work the chess game fades out."
"So what?" Linder demanded. "You merely move your eyes back and forth
and follow both things if you want to!"
"Exactly the point I was hoping to make, sir. This constant moving
back and forth gives us the impression that our conscious attention
is on two things at the very same time. Actually, though, it's only
one thing at a time. Now, imagine you lose interest in both situations
while a radio starts playing some music. A second radio comes in with
other music. By shifting attention back and forth you may manage to
identify both but you're really not hearing either one very well. And
imagine what would happen if a third stream of music started up at the
same time!"
"That's right, you can only consciously follow one thing at a time,"
Crawford nodded. His eyes widened with horror. "They don't think that
way at all! They were listening at the spaceport to musics and they see
all these different things happening on the screen at the same time
and follow it, don't they?"
"Which gives them the capacity to learn anything at tremendous speed,"
said Stern. "Take manually driving a ground vehicle. We learn one
operation until we can do it automatically, _un_thinkingly, then we
learn another operation to the same point, reinforcing our first
knowledge with the new acquirement, and so on. For all practical
purposes _they_ could learn almost everything about such a matter at
the same time, instantly!"
Stern stared at the star chart on the Command Room's wall, and wondered
whether the inward side of man was equally vast.
THE END
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