Fantastic Stories Presents the Fantastic Universe Super Pack #2. William Logan

same social environment. The average person, living in a worker’s block, would feel terribly out of place in a scientist’s center, just as I would develop terrific frustrations if I had to live with the mystics or the religious orders.”

      Dirrul deftly snatched the last piece of toast as the professor reached for it. “I’ll dial some for you if you like,” he offered.

      “Oh, no, Edward! I’m dieting, you see, and I like to think—well, as I’ve told you so often in class, we all practise self-deception of a sort. Usually it’s harmless—and almost always we symbolize it in words. For me the symbol is diet.

      “I set up a specialized definition and convince myself that I am dieting if I never directly order fattening food. That gives me an escape hatch. If food is offered to me or if it happens to—ah—to fall into my hands, I can take it and still keep a clear conscience.”

      “Perhaps you practise more self-deception than you know, Dr. Kramer,” said Eddie. “For instance, all your fine words about the strength and vitality of our new system—when I was a boy we licked the Vininese Confederacy. We couldn’t do it today.”

      “That’s a matter of opinion. We’re at peace now and we’ll remain so.”

      “Only because we have the Nuclear Beams. And look how we’ve botched that mess! Our scientists gave the process to the Vininese in order to patch together a peace when we could have destroyed their civilization completely.”

      “And our own too—with the weight of such a crime on our group conscience. There’s one thing you still must learn, Edward—scientific progress is made by the sharing of ideas, not the concealment of them. We build the future upon the truths of the past and the present. If some of those truths are hidden away we create falsely on utterly false foundations.”

      Dr. Kramer pulled a manila envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table, pushing back his chair. “I must go, Edward; these are the notes on my lecture. As I told you before, I really came here for something else. I wanted to talk to you, to get to understand you better. I think I’ve learned a great deal.”

      The little professor was no longer smiling and the gentle touch of banter was gone from his voice. Dirrul felt a creeping fear rise within him. How much had he unconsciously revealed? How many of his own beliefs had Dr. Kramer been able to read between the lines?

      Knowing them, would he guess Dirrul’s connection with the Movement? The professor’s bland naiveté could be the mask of a police informer. Dirrul shivered, remembering the sudden punishment that had overtaken Glenna and Hurd.

      At the door Dr. Kramer paused and said, “I’m entertaining two or three of the university faculty this evening, Edward. They’ve read some of the papers you have written for my class. I’d like to have you meet them. My apartment—eight-thirty.”

      It was a command rather than an invitation. Dirrul accepted.

III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Occasionally Dirrul had an uneasy feeling that he was making no real progress at all, that when he talked to the scientists he was a dancing puppet dangling on invisible strings. It seemed impossible that the scientists of the Ad-Air University could be so repeatedly defeated by his logic. Slowly, however, he reasoned his way to an explanation.

      The scientists, like the system itself, were in the last wild frenzy of a decaying social order. They had lived so long in the atmosphere of relative truths, they had so carefully schooled themselves to avoid all absolutes, that they were unable to elude the simplest processes of logic. Their very efforts to be objective made them too honest to reject a conclusion once Dirrul had demonstrated the careful structure that seemed to support it.

      *

      A month passed. Dirrul felt divorced from the Movement, existing in suspended animation in a cloud of wordy unreality. Then abruptly the slow-moving