Asimov - Profession by Isaac Asimov (1957)

At eighteen, George was rather dark, of medium height, but thin enough to look taller. Trevelyan, who was scarcely an inch shorter, had a stockiness of build that made ‘Stubby’ more than ever appropriate, but in this last year he had grown self-conscious. The nickname could no longer be used without reprisal. And since Trevelyan disapproved of his proper first name even more strongly, he was called Trevelyan or any decent variant of that. As though to prove his manhood further, he had most persistently grown a pair of sideburns and a bristly mustache.

He was sweating and nervous now, and George, who had himself grown out of ‘Jaw-jee’ and into the curt monosyllabic gutturability of ‘George,’ was rather amused by that.

They were in the same large hall they had been in ten years before (and not since). It was as if a vague dream of the past had come to sudden reality. In the first few minutes George had been distinctly surprised at finding everything seem smaller and more cramped than his memory told him; then he made allowance for his own growth.

The crowd was smaller than it had been in childhood. It was exclusively male this time. The girls had another day assigned them.

Trevelyan leaned over to say, “Beats me the way they make you wait.”

“Red tape,” said George. “You can’t avoid it.”

Trevelyan said, “What makes you so damned tolerant about it?”

“I’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, brother, you make me sick. I hope you end up Registered Manure Spreader just so I can see your face when you do.” His somber eyes swept the crowd anxiously.

George looked about, too. It wasn’t quite the system they used on the children. Matters went slower, and instructions had been given out at the start in print (an advantage over the pre-Readers). The names Platen and Trevelyan were well down the alphabet still, but this time the two knew it.

Young men came out of the education rooms, frowning and uncomfortable, picked up their clothes and belongings, then went off to analysis to learn the results.

Each, as he come out, would be surrounded by a clot of the thinning crowd. “How was it?” “How ’d it feel?” “Whacha think ya made?” “Ya feel any different?”

Answers were vague and noncommittal.

George forced himself to remain out of those clots. You only raised your own blood pressure. Everyone said you stood the best chance if you remained calm. Even so, you could feel the palms of your hands grow cold. Funny that new tensions came with the years.

For instance, high-specialty professionals heading out for an Outworld were accompanied by a wife (or husband). It was important to keep the sex ratio in good balance on all worlds. And if you were going out to a Grade A world, what girl would refuse you? George had no specific girl in mind yet; he wanted none. Not now! Once he made Programmer; once he could add to his name, Registered Computer Programmer, he could take his pick, like a sultan in a harem. The thought excited him and he tried to put it away. Must stay calm.

Trevelyan muttered “What’s it all about anyway? First they say it works best if you’re relaxed and at ease. Then they put you through this and make it impossible for you to be relaxed and at ease.”

“Maybe that’s the idea. They’re separating the boys from the men to begin with. Take it easy, Trev.”

“Shut up.”

George’s turn came. His name was not called. It appeared in glowing letters on the notice board.

He waved at Trevelyan. “Take it easy. Don’t let it get you.”

He was happy as he entered the testing chamber. Actually happy.

The man behind the desk said, “George Platen?”

For a fleeting instant there was a razor-sharp picture in George’s mind of another man, ten years earlier, who had asked the same question, and it was almost as though this were the same man and he, George, had turned eight again as he had stepped across the threshold.

But the man looked up and, of course, the face matched that of the sudden memory not at all. The nose was bulbous, the hair thin and stringy, and the chin wattled as though its owner had once been grossly overweight and had reduced.

The man behind the desk looked annoyed. “Well?”

George came to Earth. “I’m George Platen, sir.”

“Say so, then. I’m Dr Zachary Antonelli, and we’re going to be intimately acquainted in a moment.”

He stared at small strips of film, holding them up to the light owlishly.

George winced inwardly. Very hazily, he remembered that other doctor (he had forgotten the name) staring at such film. Could these be the same? The other doctor had frowned and this one was looking at him now as though he were angry.

His happiness was already just about gone.

Dr Antonelli spread the pages of a thickish file out before him now and put the films’s carefully to one side. “It says here you want to be a Computer Programmer.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Still do?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s a responsible and exacting position. Do you feel up to it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Most pre-Educates don’t put down any specific profession. I believe they are afraid of queering it.”

“I think that’s right sir.”

“Aren’t you afraid of that?”

“I might as well be honest, sir.”

Dr Antonelli nodded, but without any noticeable lightening of his expression. “Why do you want to be a Programmer?”

“It’s a responsible and exacting position as you said, sir. It’s an important job and an exciting one. I like it and I think I can do it.”

Dr Antonelli put the papers away, and looked at George sourly. He said, “How do you know you like it? Because you think you’ll be snapped up by some Grade A planet?”

George thought uneasily: He’s trying to rattle you. Stay calm and stay frank.

He said, “I think a Programmer has a good chance, sir, but even if I were left on Earth, I know I’d like it.” (That was true enough. I’m not lying, thought George.)

“All right how do you know?”

He asked it as though he knew there was no decent answer and George almost smiled. He had one.

He said, “I’ve been reading about Programming, sir.”

“You’ve been what?” Now the doctor looked genuinely astonished and George took pleasure in that.

“Reading about it, sir. I bought a book on the subject and I’ve been studying it.”

“A book for Registered Programmers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But you couldn’t understand it.”

“Not at first. I got other books on mathematics and electronics. I made out all I could. I still don’t know much, but I know enough to know I like it and to know I can make it.” (Even his parents never found that secret cache of books or knew why he spent so much time in his own room or exactly what happened to the sleep he missed.)

The doctor pulled at the loose skin under his chin. “What was your idea in doing that, son?”

“I wanted to make sure I would be interested, sir.”

“Surely you know that being interested means nothing. You could be devoured by a subject and if the physical make-up of your brain makes it more efficient for you to be something else, something else you will be. You know that, don’t you?”

“I’ve been told that,” said George cautiously.

“Well, believe it. It’s true.”

George said nothing.

Dr Antonelli said, “Or do you believe that studying some subject will bend the brain cells in that direction, like that other theory that a pregnant woman need only listen to great music persistently to make a composer of her child. Do you believe that?”

George flushed. That had certainly been in his mind. By forcing his intellect constantly in the desired direction, he had felt sure that he would be getting a head start. Most of his confidence had rested on exactly that point.

“I never-” he began, and found no way of finishing.

“Well it isn’t true. Good Lord, youngster, your brain pattern is fixed at birth. It can be altered by a blow hard enough to damage the cells or by a burst blood vessel or by a tumor or by a major infection – each time, of course, for the worse. But it certainly can’t be affected by your thinking special thoughts.” He stared at George thoughtfully, then said, “Who told you to do this?”

George, now thoroughly disturbed, swallowed and said, “No one, doctor. My own idea.”

“Who knew you were doing it after you started?”

“No one. Doctor, I meant to do no wrong.”

“Who said anything about wrong? Useless is what I would say. Why did you keep it to yourself?”

“I – I thought they’d laugh at me.” (He thought abruptly of a recent exchange with Trevelyan. George had very cautiously broached the thought, as of something merely circulating distantly in the very outermost reaches of his mind, concerning the possibility of learning something by ladling it into the mind by hand, so to speak, in bits and pieces. Trevelyan had hooted, “George, you’ll be tanning your own shoes next and weaving your own shirts.” He had been thankful then for his policy of secrecy.)

Dr Antonelli shoved the bits of film he had first looked at from position to position in morose thought. Then he said, “Let’s get you analyzed. This is getting me nowhere.”

The wires went to George’s temples. There was the buzzing. Again there came a sharp memory of ten years ago.

George’s hands were clammy; his heart pounded. He should never have told the doctor about his secret reading. It was his damned vanity, he told himself. He had wanted to show how enterprising he was, how full of initiative. Instead, he had showed himself superstitious and ignorant and aroused the hostility of the doctor. (He could tell the doctor hated him for a wise guy on the make.)

And now he had brought himself to such a state of nervousness, he was sure the analyzer would show nothing that made sense.

He wasn’t aware of the moment when the wires were removed from his temples. The sight of the doctor, staring at him thoughtfully, blinked into his consciousness and that was that; the wires were gone. George dragged himself together with a tearing effort. He had quite given up his ambition to be a Programmer. In the space of ten minutes, it had all gone.

He said dismally, “I suppose no?”

“No what?”

“No Programmer?”

The doctor rubbed his nose and said, “You get your clothes and whatever belongs to you and go to room 15-C. Your files will be waiting for you there. So will my report.”

George said in complete surprise, “Have I been Educated already? I thought this was just to –”

Dr Antonelli stared down at his desk. “It will all be explained to you. You do as I say.”

George felt something like panic. What was it they couldn’t tell him? He wasn’t fit for anything but Registered Laborer. They were going to prepare him for that; adjust him to it.

He was suddenly certain of it and he had to keep from screaming by main force.

He stumbled back to his place of waiting. Trevelyan was not there, a fact for which he would have been thankful if he had had enough self-possession to be meaningfully aware of his surroundings. Hardly anyone was left, in fact, and the few who were looked as though they might ask him questions were it not that they were too worn out by their tail-of-the-alphabet waiting to buck the fierce, hot look of anger and hate he cast at them.

What right had they to be technicians and he, himself, a Laborer? Laborer! He was certain!

He was led by a red-uniformed guide along the busy corridors lined with separate rooms each containing its groups, here two, there five: the Motor Mechanics, the Construction Engineers, the Agronomists – There were hundreds of specialized Professions and most of them would be represented in this small town by one or two anyway.

He hated them all just then: the Statisticians, the Accountants, the lesser breeds and the higher. He hated them because they owned their smug knowledge now, knew their fate, while he himself, empty still, had to face some kind of further red tape.

He reached 15-C, was ushered in and left in an empty room. For one moment, his spirits bounded. Surely, if this were the labor classification room, there would be dozens of youngsters present.

A door sucked into its recess on the other side of a waist-high partition and an elderly, white-haired man stepped out. He smiled and showed even teeth that were obviously false, but his face was still ruddy and unlined and his voice had vigor.

He said, “Good evening, George. Our own sector has only one of you this time, I see.”

“Only one?” said George blankly.

“Thousands over the Earth, of course. Thousands. You’re not alone.”

George felt exasperated. He said, “I don’t understand, sir. What’s my classification? What’s happening?”

“Easy, son. You’re all right. It could happen to anyone. He held out his hand and George took it mechanically. It was warm and it pressed George’s hand firmly. “Sit down, son. I’m Sam Ellenford.”

George nodded impatiently. “I want to know what’s going on, sir.”

“Of course. To begin with, you can’t be a Computer Programmer, George. You’ve guessed that I think.”

“Yes, I have,’ said George bitterly. “What will I be, then?”

“That’s the hard part to explain, George.” He paused, then said with careful distinctness, “Nothing.”

“What!”

“Nothing!”

“But what does that mean? Why can’t you assign me a profession?”

“We have no choice in the matter, George. It’s the structure of your mind that decides that.”

George went a sallow yellow. His eyes bulged. “There’s something wrong with my mind?”

“There’s something about it. As far as professional classification is concerned, I suppose you can call it wrong.”

“But why?”

Ellenford shrugged. “I’m sure you know how Earth runs its Educational program, George. Practically any human being can absorb practically any body of knowledge, but each individual brain pattern is better suited to receiving some types of knowledge than others. We try to match mind to knowledge as well as we can within the limits of the quota requirements for each profession.”

George nodded. “Yes, I know.”

“Every once in a while, George, we come up against a young man whose mind is not suited to receiving a superimposed knowledge of any sort.”

“You mean I can’t be Educated?”

“That is what I mean.”

“But that’s crazy. I’m intelligent. I can understand –”� He looked helplessly about as though trying to find some way of proving that he had a functioning brain.

“Don’t misunderstand me, please”, said Ellenford gravely. “ You’re intelligent. There’s no question about that. You’re even above average in intelligence. Unfortunately that has nothing to do with whether the mind ought to be allowed to accept superimposed knowledge or not. In fact, it is almost always the intelligent person who comes here.”

“You mean I can’t even be a Registered Laborer?” babbled George. Suddenly even that was better than the blank that faced him. “What’s there to know to be a Laborer?”

“Don’t underestimate the Laborer, young man. There are dozens of subclassifications and each variety has its own corpus of fairly detailed knowledge. Do you think there’s no skill in knowing the proper manner of lifting a weight? Besides, for the Laborer, we must select not only minds suited to it but bodies as well. You’re not the type, George, to last long as a Laborer.”

George was conscious of his slight build. He said, “But I’ve never heard of anyone without a profession.”

“There aren’t many,” conceded Ellenford. “And we protect them.”

“Protect them?” George felt confusion and fright grow higher inside him.

“You’re a ward of the planet, George. From the time you walked through that door, we’ve been in charge of you.” And he smiled.

It was a fond smile. To George it seemed the smile of ownership; the smile of a grown man for a helpless child.

He said, “You mean, I’m going to be in prison?”

“Of course not. You will simply be with others of your kind.”

Your kind. The words made a kind of thunder in George’s ear.

Ellenford said, “You need special treatment. We’ll take care of you.”

To George’s own horror, he burst into tears. Ellenford walked to the other end of the room and faced away as though in thought.

George fought to reduce the agonized weeping to sobs and then to strangle those. He thought of his father and mother, of his friends, of Trevelyan, of his own shame – He said rebelliously, “I learned to read.”

“Everyone with a whole mind can do that. We’ve never found exceptions. It is at this stage that we discover – exceptions. And when you learned to read, George, we were concerned about your mind pattern. Certain peculiarities were reported even then by the doctor in charge.”

“Can’t you try Educating me? You haven’t even tried. I’m willing to take the risk.”

“The law forbids us to do that, George. But look, it will not be bad. We will explain matters to your family so they will not be hurt. At the place to which you’ll be taken, you’ll be allowed privileges. We’ll get you books and you can learn what you will.”

“Dab knowledge in by hand,” said George bitterly. “Shred by shred. Then, when I die I’ll know enough to be a Registered Junior Office Boy, Paper-Clip Division.”

“Yet I understand you’ve already been studying books.”

George froze. He was struck devastatingly by sudden understanding. “That’s it”

“What is?”

“That fellow Antonelli. He’s knifing me.”

“No, George. You’re quite wrong.”

“Don’t tell me that.” George was in an ecstasy of fury. “That lousy bastard is selling me out because he thought I was a little too wise for him. I read books and tried to get a head start toward programming. Well, what do you want to square things? Money? You won’t get it. I’m getting out of here and when I finish broadcasting this –”�

He was screaming.

Ellenford shook his head and touched a contact.

Two men entered on catfeet and got on either side of George. They pinned his arms to his sides. One of them used an air-spray hypodermic in the hollow of his right elbow and the hypnotic entered his vein and had an almost immediate effect.

His screams cut off and his head fell forward. His knees buckled and only the men on either side kept him erect as he slept.

They took care of George as they said they would; they were good to him and unfailingly kind – about the way, George thought, he himself would be to a sick kitten he had taken pity on.

They told him that he should sit up and take some interest in life; and then told him that most people who came there had the same attitude of despair at the beginning and that he would snap out of it.

He didn’t even hear them.

Dr Ellenford himself visited him to tell him that his parents had been informed that he was away on special assignment.

George muttered, “Do they know –”�

Ellenford assured him at once,“We gave no details.”

At first George had refused to eat. They fed him intravenously. They hid sharp objects and kept him under guard. Hali Omani came to be his roommate and his stolidity had a calming effect.

One day, out of sheer desperate boredom, George asked for a book. Omani, who himself read books constantly, looked up, smiling broadly. George almost withdrew the request then, rather than give any of them satisfaction, then thought: What do I care?

He didn’t specify the book and Omani brought one on chemistry. It was in big print, with small words and many illustrations. It was for teenagers. He threw the book violently against the wall.

That’s what he would be always. A teenager all his life. A pre-Educate forever and special books would have to be written for him. He lay smoldering in bed, staring at the ceiling, and after an hour had passed, he got up sulkily, picked up the book, and began reading.

It took him a week to finish it and then he asked for another.

“Do you want me to take the first one back?” asked Omani.

George frowned. There were things in the book he had not understood, yet he was not so lost to shame as to say so.

But Omani said, “Come to think of it, you’d better keep it. Books are meant to be read and reread.”

It was that same day that he finally yielded to Omani’s invitation that he tour the place. He dogged at the Nigerian’s feet and took in his surroundings with quick hostile glances.

The place was no prison certainly. There were no walls, no locked doors, no guards. But it was a prison in that the inmates had no place to go outside.

It was somehow good to see others like himself by the dozen. It was so easy to believe himself to be the only one in the world so – maimed.

He mumbled, “How many people here anyway?”

“Two hundred and five, George, and this isn’t the only place of the sort in the world. There are thousands.”

Men looked up as he passed, wherever he went; in the gymnasium, along the tennis courts; through the library (he had never in his life imagined books could exist in such numbers; they were stacked, actually stacked, along long shelves). They stared at him curiously and he returned the looks savagely. At least they were no better than he; no call for them to look at him as though he were some son of curiosity.

Most of them were in their twenties. George said suddenly, “What happens to the older ones?”

Omani said, “This place specializes in the younger ones.” Then, as though he suddenly recognized an implication in George’s question that he had missed earlier, he shook his head gravely and said, “They’re not put out of the way, if that’s what you mean. There are other Houses for older ones.”

“Who cares?” mumbled George, who felt he was sounding too interested and in danger of slipping into surrender.

“You might. As you grow older, you will find yourself in a House with occupants of both sexes.”

That surprised George somehow. “Women, too?”

“Of course. Do you suppose women are immune to this sort of thing?”

George thought of that with more interest and excitement than he had felt for anything since before that day when –  He forced his thought away from that.

Omani stopped at the doorway of a room that contained a small closed-circuit television set and a desk computer.

Five or six men sat about the television. Omani said, “This is a classroom.”

George said, “What’s that?”

“The young men in there are being educated. Not,” he added, quickly, “in the usual way.”

“You mean they’re cramming it in bit by bit.”

“That’s right. This is the way everyone did it in ancient times.”

This was what they kept telling him since he had come to the House but what of it? Suppose there had been a day when mankind had not known the diatherm-oven. Did that mean he should be satisfied to eat meat raw in a world where others ate it cooked?

He said, “Why do they want to go through that bit-by-bit stuff?”

“To pass the time, George, and because they’re curious.”

“What good does it do them?”

“It makes them happier.”

George carried that thought to bed with him.

The next day he said to Omani ungraciously, “Can you get me into a classroom where I can find out something about programming?”

Omani replied heartily, “Sure.”

It was slow and he resented it. Why should someone have to explain something and explain it again? Why should he have to read and reread a passage, then stare at a mathematical relationship and not understand it at once? That wasn’t how other people had to be.

Over and over again, he gave up. Once he refused to attend classes for a week.

But always he returned. The official in charge, who assigned reading, conducted the television demonstrations, and even explained difficult passages and concepts, never commented on the matter.

George was finally given a regular task in the gardens and took his turn in the various kitchen and cleaning details. This was represented to him as being an advance, but he wasn’t fooled. The place might have been far more mechanized than it was, but they deliberately made work for the young men in order to give them the illusion of worth-while occupation, of usefulness. George wasn’t fooled.

They were even paid small sums of money out of which they could buy certain specified luxuries or which they could put aside for a problematical use in a problematical old age. George kept his money in an open jar, which he kept on a closet shelf. He had no idea how much he had accumulated. Nor did he care.

He made no real friends though he reached the stage where a civil good day was in order. He even stopped brooding (or almost stopped) on the miscarriage of justice that had placed him there. He would go weeks without dreaming of Antonelli, of his gross nose and wattled neck, of the leer with which he would push George into a boiling quicksand and hold him under, till he woke screaming with Omani bending over him in concern.

Omani said to him on a snowy day in February, “It’s amazing how you’re adjusting.”

But that was February, the thirteenth to be exact, his nineteenth birthday. March came, then April, and with the approach of May he realized he hadn’t adjusted at all.

The previous May had passed unregarded while George was still in his bed, drooping and ambitionless. This May was different.

All over Earth, George knew, Olympics would be taking place and young men would be competing, matching their skills against one another in the fight for a place on a new world. There would be the holiday atmosphere, the excitement, the news reports, the self-contained recruiting agents from the worlds beyond space, the glory of victory or the consolations of defeat.

How much of fiction dealt with these motifs, how much of his own boyhood excitement lay in following the events of Olympics from year to year; how many of his own plans –

George Platen could not conceal the longing in his voice.

It was too much to suppress. He said, “Tomorrow’s the first of May. Olympics!”

And that led to his first quarrel with Omani and to Omani’s bitter enunciation of the exact name of the institution in which George found himself.

Omani gazed fixedly at George and said distinctly, “A House for the Feeble-minded.”

The hall was moderate in size and shaped in the classical long oval with the spectators in the two balconies running completely about the rim and the contestants in the linear trough down the center. The machines were set up, the progress boards above each bench were dark, except for the name and contest number of each man. The contestants themselves were on the scene, reading, talking together; one was checking his fingernails minutely.(It was, of course, considered bad form for any contestant to pay any attention to the problem before him until the instant of the starting signal.)

George studied the program sheet he found in the appropriate slot in the arm of his chair and found Trevelyan’s name. His number was twelve and, to George’s chagrin, that was at the wrong end of the hall. He could make out the figure of Contestant Twelve, standing with his hands in his pockets, back to his machine, and staring at the audience as though he were counting the house. George couldn’t make out the face.

Still that was Trev.

George sank back in his seat. He wondered if Trev would do well. He hoped, as a matter of conscious duty, that he would, and yet there was something within him that felt rebelliously resentful. George, professionless, here, watching. Trevelyan, Registered Metallurgist, Nonferrous, there, competing.

George wondered if Trevelyan had competed in his first year. Sometimes men did, if they felt particularly confident – or hurried. It involved a certain risk. However efficient the Educative process, a preliminary year on Earth ('oiling the stiff knowledge’, as the expression went) insured a higher score.

If Trevelyan was repeating, maybe he wasn’t doing so well. George felt ashamed that the thought pleased him just a bit.

He looked about. The stands were almost full. This would be a well-attended Olympics, which meant greater strain on the contestants – or greater drive, perhaps, depending on the individual.

Why Olympics, he thought suddenly? He had never known. Why was bread called bread?

Once he had asked his father: “Why do they call it Olympics, Dad?”

And his father had said: “Olympics means competition.”

George had said: “Is when Stubby and I fight an Olympics, Dad?”

Platen, Senior, had said: “No. Olympics is a special kind of competition and don’t ask silly questions. You’ll know all you have to know when you get Educated.”

George, back in the present, sighed and crowded down into his seat.

All you have to know!

Funny that the memory should be so clear now. “When you get Educated.” No one ever said, “If you get Educated.”

He always had asked silly questions, it seemed to him now. It was as though his mind had some instinctive foreknowledge of its inability to be Educated and had gone about asking questions in order to pick up scraps here and there as best it could.

And at the House they encouraged him to do so because They agreed with his mind’s instinct. It was the only way.

He sat up suddenly. What the devil was he doing? Falling for that lie? Was it because Trev was there before him, an Educee, competing in the Olympics that he himself was surrendering?

He wasn’t feeble-minded! No!

And the shout of denial in his mind was echoed by the sudden clamor in the audience as everyone got to his feet. The box seat in the very center of one long side of the oval was filling with an entourage wearing the colors of Novia, and the word ‘Novia’ went up above them on the main board.

There was, of course, no way anyone in the audience could tell how any contestant was progressing except for whatever notations went up on the notice board. But then, that didn’t matter. Except for what professional Metallurgists there might be in the audience, none would understand anything about the contest professionally in any case. What was important was who won, who was second, who was third. For those who had bets on the standings (illegal but unpreventable) that was all-important. Everything else might go hang.

George watched as eagerly as the rest, glancing from one contestant to the next, observing how this one had removed the cover from his microspectrograph with deft strokes of a small instrument; how that one was peering into the face of the thing; how still a third was setting his alloy bar into its holder; and how a fourth adjusted a vernier with such small touches that he seemed momentarily frozen.

Trevelyan was as absorbed as the rest. George had no way of telling how he was doing.

The notice board over Contestant Seventeen flashed:

Focus plate out of adjustment.

The audience cheered wildly.

Contestant Seventeen might be right and he might, of course, be wrong. If the latter, he would have to correct his diagnosis later and lose time. Or he might never correct his diagnosis and be unable to complete his analysis or, worse still, end with a completely wrong analysis.

Never mind. For the moment, the audience cheered.

Other boards lit up. George watched for Board Twelve. That came on finally: ‘Sample holder off-center. New clamp depresser needed.’

An attendant went running to him with a new pan. If Trevelyan was wrong, it would mean useless delay. Nor would the time elapsed in waiting for the pan be deducted. George found himself holding his breath.

Results were beginning to go up on Board Seventeen, in gleaming letters: aluminum, 41.2649; magnesium, 22.1914; copper, 10.1001.

Here and there, other boards began sprouting figures.

The audience was in bedlam.

George wondered how the contestants could work in such pandemonium, then wondered if that were not even a good thing. A first-class technician should work best under pressure.

Seventeen rose from his place as his board went red-rimmed to signify completion. Four was only two seconds behind him. Another, then another.

Trevelyan was still working, the minor constituents of his alloy bar still unreported. With nearly all contestants standing, Trevelyan finally rose, also. Then, tailing off, Five rose, and received an ironic cheer.

It wasn’t over. Official announcements were naturally delayed. Time elapsed was something, but accuracy was just as important. And not all diagnoses were of equal difficulty. A dozen factors had to be weighed.

Finally, the announcer’s voice sounded, “Winner in the time of four minutes and twelve seconds, diagnosis correct, analysis correct within an average of zero point seven parts per hundred thousand, Contestant Number – Seventeen, Henry Anton Schrnidt of –”�

What followed was drowned in the screaming. Number Eight was next and then Four, whose good time was spoiled by a five part in ten thousand error in the niobium figure. Twelve was never mentioned. He was an also-ran. George made his way through the crowd to the Contestant’s Door and found a large clot of humanity ahead of him. There would be weeping relatives (joy or sorrow, depending) to greet them, newsmen to interview the top-scorers, or the home-town boys, autograph hounds, publicity seekers and the just plain curious. Girls, too, who might hope to catch the eye of a top-scorer, almost certainly headed for Novia (or perhaps a low-scorer who needed consolation and had the cash to afford it).

George hung back. He saw no one he knew. With San Francisco so far from home, it seemed pretty safe to assume that there would be no relatives to condole with Trev on the spot.

Contestants emerged, smiling weakly, nodding at shouts of approval. Policemen kept the crowds far enough away to allow a lane for walking. Each high-scorer drew a portion of the crowd off with him, like a magnet pushing through a mound of iron filings.

When Trevelyan walked out, scarcely anyone was left. (George felt somehow that he had delayed coming out until just that had come to pass.) There was a cigarette in his dour mouth and he turned, eyes downcast, to walk off. It was the first hint of home George had had in what was almost a year and a half and seemed almost a decade and a half. He was almost amazed that Trevelyan hadn’t aged, that he was the same Trev he had last seen.

George sprang forward. “Trev!”

Trevelyan spun about, astonished. He stared at George and then his hand shot out. “George Platen, what the devil – ”�

And almost as soon as the look of pleasure had crossed his face, It left. His hand dropped before George had quite the chance of seizing it.

“Were you in there?’ A curt jerk of Trev’s head indicated the hall.

“I was.”

“To see me?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t do so well did I?” He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, staring off to the street, where the emerging crowd was slowly eddying and finding its way into skimmers, while new lines were forming for the next scheduled Olympics.

Trevelyan said heavily, “So what? It’s only the second time I missed. Novia can go shove after the deal I got today. There are planets that would jump at me fast enough – But, listen, I haven’t seen you since Education Day. Where did you go? Your folks said you were on special assignment but gave no details and you never wrote. You might have written.”

“I should have,” said George uneasily. “Anyway, I came to say I was sorry the way things went just now.”

“Don’t be,” said Trevelyan. “I told you. Novia can go shove – At that I should have known. They've been saying for weeks that the Beeman machine would be used. All the wise money was on Beeman machines. The damned Education tapes they ran through me were for Henslers and who uses Henslers? The worlds in the Goman Cluster if you want to call them worlds. Wasn’t that a nice deal they gave me?”

“Can’t you complain to –”�

“Don’t be a fool. They’ll tell me my brain was built for Henslers. Go argue. Everything went wrong. I was the only one who had to send out for a piece of equipment. Notice that?”

“They deducted the time for that, though.”

“Sure, but I lost time wondering if I could be right in my diagnosis when I noticed there wasn’t any clamp depresser in the parts they had supplied. They don’t deduct for that. If it had been a Hensler, I would have known I was right. How could I match up then? The top winner was a San Franciscan. So were three of the next four. And the fifth guy was from Los Angeles. They get big-city Educational tapes. The best available. Beeman spectrographs and all. How do I compete with them? I came all the way out here just to get a chance at a Novian-sponsored Olympics in my classification and I might just as well have stayed home. I knew it, I tell you, and that settles it. Novia isn’t the only chunk of rock in space. Of all the damned –”

He wasn’t speaking to George. He wasn’t speaking to anyone. He was just uncorked and frothing. George realized that.

George said, “If you knew in advance that the Beemans were going to be used, couldn’t you have studied up on them?”

“They weren’t in my tapes, I tell you.”

“You could have read – books.”

The last word had tailed off under Trevelyan’s suddenly sharp look.

Trevelyan said, “Are you trying to make a big laugh out of this? You think this is funny? How do you expect me to read some book and try to memorize enough to match someone else who knows.”

“I thought –”�

“You try it. You try –”� Then, suddenly, “What’s your profession, by the way?” He sounded thoroughly hostile.

“Well –”�

“Come on, now. If you’re going to be a wise guy with me, let’s see what you’ve done. You’re still on Earth, I notice, so you’re not a Computer Programmer and your special assignment can’t be much.”

George said, “Listen, Trev, I’m late for an appointment.” He backed away, trying to smile.

“No, you don’t.” Trevelyan reached out fiercely, catching hold of George’s jacket. “You answer my question. Why are you afraid to tell me? What is it with you? Don’t come here rubbing a bad showing in my face, George, unless you can take it, too. Do you hear me?”

He was shaking George in frenzy and they were struggling and swaying across the floor, when the Voice of Doom struck George’s ear in the form of a policeman’s outraged call.

“All right now. All right. Break it up.”

George’s heart turned to lead and lurched sickeningly. The policeman would be taking names, asking to see identity cards, and George lacked one. He would be questioned and his lack of profession would show at once; and before Trevelyan, too, who ached with the pain of the drubbing he had taken and would spread the news back home as a salve for his own hurt feelings.

George couldn’t stand that. He broke away from Trevelyan and made to run, but the policeman’s heavy hand was on his shoulder. “Hold on there. Let’s see your identity card.”

“Trevelyan was fumbling for his, saying harshly, “I’m Amand Trevelyan, Metallurgist, Nonferrous. I was just competing in the Olympics. You better find out about him, though, officer.”

George faced the two, lips dry and throat thickened past speech.

Another voice sounded, quiet, well-mannered. “Officer. One moment.”

The policeman stepped back. “Yes, sir?”

“This young man is my guest. What is the trouble?”

George looked about in wild surprise. It was the gray-haired man who had been sitting next to him. Gray-hair nodded benignly at George.

Guest? Was he mad?

The policeman was saying, “These two were creating a disturbance, sir.”

“Any criminal charges? Any damages?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, I’ll be responsible.” He presented a small card to the policeman’s view and the latter stepped back at once.

Trevelyan began indignantly, “Hold on, now –”� but the policeman turned on him.

“All right, now. Got any charges?”

“I just –”�

“On your way. The rest of you – move on.” A sizable crowd had gathered, which now, reluctantly, unknotted itself and raveled away.

George let himself be led to a skimmer but balked at entering.

He said, “Thank you, but I’m not your guest.” (Could it be a ridiculous case of mistaken identity?)

But Gray-hair smiled and said, “You weren’t but you are now. Let me introduce myself, I’m Ladislas Ingenescu, Registered Historian.”

“But –”�

“Come, you will come to no harm, I assure you. After all, I only wanted to spare you some trouble with a policeman.”

“But why?”

“Do you want a reason? Well, then, say that we’re honorary towns-mates, you and I. We both shouted for the same man, remember, and we towns-people must stick together, even if the tie is only honorary. Eh?”

And George, completely unsure of this man, Ingenescu, and of himself as well, found himself inside the skimmer. Before he could make up his mind that he ought to get off again, they were off the ground.

He thought confusedly: The man has some status. The policeman deferred to him.

He was almost forgetting that his real purpose here in San Francisco was not to find Trevelyan but to find some person with enough influence to force a reappraisal of his own capacity of Education.

It could be that Ingenescu was such a man. And right in George’s lap.

Everything could be working out fine – fine. Yet it sounded hollow in his thought. He was uneasy.

During the short skimmer-hop, Ingenescu kept up an even flow of small talk, pointing out the landmarks of the city, reminiscing about past Olympics he had seen. George, who paid just enough attention to make vague sounds during the pauses, watched the route of flight anxiously.

Would they head for one of the shield-openings and leave the city altogether?

The skimmer landed at the roof-entry of a hotel and, as he alighted, Ingenescu said, “I hope you’ll eat dinner with me in my room?”

George said, “Yes,” and grinned unaffectedly. He was just beginning to realize the gap left within him by a missing lunch.

Ingenescu let George eat in silence. Night closed in and the wall lights went on automatically. (George thought: I’ve been on my own almost twenty-four hours.)

And then over the coffee, Ingenescu finally spoke again. He said, “You’ve been acting as though you think I intend you harm.”

George reddened, put down his cup and tried to deny it, but the older man laughed and shook his head.

“It’s so. I’ve been watching you closely since I first saw you and I think I know a great deal about you now.”

George half rose in horror.

Ingenescu said, “But sit down. I only want to help you.”

George sat down but his thoughts were in a whirl. If the old man knew who he was, why had he not left him to the policeman? On the other hand, why should he volunteer help?

Ingenescu said, “You want to know why I should want to help you? Oh, don’t look alarmed. I can’t read minds. It’s just that my training enables me to judge the little reactions that give minds away, you see. Do you understand that?”

George shook his head.

Ingenescu said, “Consider my first sight of you. You were waiting in line to watch an Olympics, and your micro-reactions didn’t match what you were doing. The expression of your face was wrong, the action of your hands was wrong. It meant that something, in general was wrong, and the interesting thing was that, whatever it was, it was nothing common, nothing obvious. Perhaps, I thought, it was something of which your own conscious mind was unaware.
“I couldn’t help but follow you, sit next to you. I followed you again when you left and eavesdropped on the conversation between your friend and yourself. After that, well, you were far too interesting an object of study – I’m sorry if that sounds cold-blooded – for me to allow you to be taken off by a policeman. – Now tell me, what is it that troubles you?”

George was in an agony of indecision. If this was a trap, why should it be such an indirect, roundabout one? And he had to turn to someone. He had come to the city to find help and here was help being offered. Perhaps what was wrong was that it was being offered. It came too easy.

Ingenescu said, “Of course, what you tell me as a Social Scientist is a privileged communication. Do you know what that means?”

“No, sir.”

“It means, it would be dishonorable for me to repeat what you say to anyone for any purpose. Moreover no one has the legal right to compel me to repeat it.”

George said, with sudden suspicion, “I thought you were a Historian.”

“So I am.”

“Just now you said you were a Social Scientist.”

lngenescu broke into loud laughter and apologized for it when he could talk. “I’m sorry, young man, I shouldn’t laugh, and I wasn’t really laughing at you. I was laughing at Earth and its emphasis on physical science, and the practical segments of it at that. I’ll bet you can rattle off every subdivision of construction technology or mechanical engineering and yet you’re a blank on social science.”

“Well, then what is social science?”

“Social science studies groups of human beings and there are many high-specialized branches to it, just as there are to zoology, for instance. For instance, there are Culturists, who study the mechanics of cultures, their growth, development, and decay. Cultures,’ he added, forestalling a question, “are all the aspects of a way of life. For instance it includes the way we make our living, the things we enjoy and believe, what we consider good and bad and so on. Do you understand?”

“I think I do.”

“An Economist – not an Economic Statistician, now, but an Economist – specializes in the study of the way a culture supplies the bodily needs of its individual members. A psychologist specializes in the individual member of a society and how he is affected by the society. A Futurist specializes in planning the future course of a society, and a Historian – That’s where I come in, now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A Historian specializes in the past development of our own society and of societies with other cultures.”

George found himself interested. “Was it different in the past?”

“I should say it was. Until a thousand years ago, there was no Education; not what we call Education, at least.”

George said, “I know. People learned in bits and pieces out of books.”

“Why, how do you know this?”

“I’ve heard it said,’ said George cautiously. Then, “Is there any use in worrying about what’s happened long ago? I mean, it’s all done with, isn’t it?”

“It’s never done with, my boy. The past explains the present. For instance, why is our Educational system what it is?”

George stirred restlessly. The man kept bringing the subject back to that. He said snappishly, “Because it’s best.”

“Ah, but why is it best? Now you listen to me for one moment and I’ll explain. Then you can tell me if there is any use in history. Even before interstellar travel was developed –”� He broke off at the look of complete astonishment on George’s face. “Well, did you think we always had it?”

“I never gave it any thought, sir.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. But there was a time, four or five thousand years ago, when mankind was confined to the surface of Earth. Even then, his culture had grown quite technological and his numbers had increased to the point where any failure in technology would have meant mass starvation and disease. To maintain the technological level and advance it in the face of an increasing population, more and more technicians and scientists had to be trained, and yet, as science advanced, it took longer and longer to train them.
“As first interplanetary and then interstellar travel was developed, the problem grew more acute. In fact, actual colonization of extra-Solar planets was impossible for about fifteen hundred years because of lack of properly trained men.
“The turning point came when the mechanics of the storage of knowledge within the brain was worked out. Once that had been done, it became possible to devise Educational tapes that would modify the mechanics in such a way as to place within the mind a body of knowledge ready-made so to speak. But you know about that.
“Once that was done, trained men could be turned out by the thousands and millions, and we could begin what someone has since called the ‘Filling of the Universe.’ There are now fifteen hundred inhabited planets in the Galaxy and there is no end in sight.
“Do you see all that is involved? Earth exports Education tapes for low-specialized professions and that keeps the Galactic culture unified. For instance, the Reading tapes insure a single language for all of us. – Don’t look so surprised, other languages are possible and in the past were used. Hundreds of them.
“Earth also exports high-specialized professionals and keeps its own population at an endurable level. Since they are shipped out in a balanced sex ratio, they act as self-reproductive units and help increase the populations on the Outworlds where an increase is needed. Furthermore, tapes and men are paid for in material which we much need and on which our economy depends. Now do you understand why our Education is the best way?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Does it help you to understand knowing that without it, interstellar colonization was impossible for fifteen hundred years?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you see the uses of history.” The Historian smiled. “ And now I wonder if you see why I’m interested in you?”

George snapped out of time and space back to reality. Ingenescu, apparently, didn’t talk aimlessly. All this lecture had been a device to attack him from a new angle.

He said, once again withdrawn, hesitating, “Why?”

“Social Scientists work with societies and societies are made up of people.”

“All right.”

“But people aren’t machines. The professionals in physical science work with machines. There is only a limited amount to know about a machine and the professionals know it all. Furthermore, all machines of given sort are just about alike so that there is nothing to interest them in any given individual machine. But people, ah – They are so complex and so different one from another that a Social Scientist never knows all there is to know or even a good part of what there is to know. To understand his own specialty, he must always be ready to study people; particularly unusual specimens.”

“Like me,’ said George tonelessly.

“I shouldn’t call you a specimen, I suppose, but you are unusual. You’re worth studying, and If you will allow me that privilege then, in return, I will help you if you are in trouble and if I can.”

There were pin wheels whirring in George’s mind. – All this talk about people and colonization made possible by Education. It was as though caked thought within him were being broken up and strewn about mercilessly.

He said, “Let me think,” and clamped his hands over his ears.

He took them away and said to the Historian, “Will you do something for me, sir?”

“If I can,” said the Historian amiably.

“And everything I say in this room is a privileged communication. You said so.”

“And I meant it.”

“Then get me an interview with an Outworld official with – with a Novian.”

Ingenescu looked startled. “Well, now –”

“You can do it,’ said George earnestly. “You’re an important official. I saw the policeman’s look when you put that card in front of his eyes. If you refuse, I – I won’t let you study me.”

It sounded a silly threat in George’s own ears, one without force. On Ingenescu, however, it seemed to have a strong effect.

He said, “That’s an impossible condition. A Novian in Olympics month –”�

“All right, then, get me a Novian on the phone and I’ll my own arrangements for an interview.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I know I can. Wait and see.”

Ingenescu stared at George thoughtfully and then reached for the visiphone.

George waited, half drunk with this new outlook on the whole problem and the sense of power it brought. It couldn’t miss. It couldn’t miss. He would be a Novian yet. He would leave Earth in triumph despite Antonelli and the whole crew of fools at the House for the (he almost laughed aloud) Feeble-minded.

George watched eagerly as the visiplate lit up. It would open up a window into a room of Novians, a window into a small patch of Novia transplanted to Earth. In twenty-four hours, he had accomplished that much.

There was a burst of laughter as the plate unmisted and sharpened, but for the moment no single head could be seen but rather the fast passing of the shadows of men and women, this way and that. A voice was heard, clearworded over a background of babble. “Ingenescu? He wants me?”

Then there he was, staring out of the plate. A Novian. A genuine Novian. (George had not an atom of doubt. There was something completely Outworldly about him. Nothing that could be completely defined, or even momentarily mistaken.)

He was swarthy in complexion with a dark wave of hair combed rigidly back from his forehead. He wore a thin black mustache and a pointed beard, just as dark, that scarcely reached below the lower limit of his narrow chin, but the rest of his face was so smooth that it looked a though it had been depilated permanently.

He was smiling. “Ladislas, this goes too far. We fully expect to be spied on, within reason, during our stay on Earth, but mind reading is out of bounds.”

“Mind reading, Honorable?”

“Confess! You knew I was going to call you this evening. You knew I was only waiting to finish this drink.” His moved up into view and his eye peered through a glass of a faintly violet liqueur. “I can’t offer you one, afraid.”

George, out of range of Ingenescu’s transmitter, could not be seen by the Novian. He was relieved at that. He wanted time to compose himself and he needed it badly. It was as though he were made up exclusively of restless fingers, drumming, drumming –

But he was right. He hadn’t miscalculated. Ingenescu was important. The Novian called him by his first name.

Good! Things worked well. What George had lost on Antonelli, he would make up, with advantage, on Ingenescu. And someday, when he was on his own at last, and could come back to Earth as powerful a Novian as this one who could negligently joke with Ingenescu’s first name and be addressed as ‘Honorable’ in turn – when he came back, he would settle with Antonelli. He had a year and a half to pay back and he –

He all but lost his balance on the brink of the enticing daydream and snapped back in sudden anxious realization that he was losing the thread of what was going on.

The Novian was saying, “– doesn’t hold water. Novia has a civilization as complicated and advanced as Earth’s. We’re not Zeston, after all. It’s ridiculous that we have to come here for individual technicians.”

Ingenescu said soothingly, “Only for new models. There is never any certainty that new models will be needed. To buy the Educational tapes would cost you the same price as a thousand technicians and how do you know you would need that many?”

The Novian tossed off what remained of his drink and laughed. (It displeased George, somehow, that a Novian should be this frivolous. He wondered uneasily if perhaps the Novian ought not to have skipped that drink and even the one or two before that.)

The Novian said, 'That’s typical pious fraud, Ladislas. You know we can make use of all the late models we can. I collected five Metallurgists this afternoon –”

“I know,’ said Ingenescu. “I was there.”

“Watching me! Spying!” cried the Novian. “I’ll tell you What it is. The new-model Metallurgists I got differed from the previous model only in knowing the use of Beeman Spectrographs. The tapes couldn’t be modified that much, not that much” (he held up two fingers close together) “from last year’s model. You introduce the new models only to make us buy and spend and come here hat in hand.”

“We don’t make you buy.”

“No, but you sell late-model technicians to Landonum and so we have to keep pace. It’s a merry-go-round you have us on, you pious Earthmen, but watch out, there may be an exit somewhere.” There was a sharp edge to his laugh, and it ended sooner than it should have.

Ingenescu said, “In all honesty, I hope there is. Meanwhile, as to the purpose of my call-”

“That’s right, you called. Oh, well, I’ve said my say and I suppose next year there’ll be a new model of Metallurgist anyway for us to spend goods on, probably with a new gimmick for niobium assays and nothing else altered and the next year – But go on, what is it you want?”

“I have a young man here to whom I wish you to speak.”

“Oh?” The Novian looked not completely pleased with that. “ Concerning what?”

“I can’t say. He hasn’t told me. For that matter he hasn’t even told me his name and profession.”

The Novian frowned. “Then why take up my time?”

“He seems quite confident that you will be interested in what he has to say.”

“I dare say.”

“And,” said Ingenescu, “as a favor to me.”

The Novian shrugged. “Put him on and tell him to make it short.”

Ingenescu stepped aside and whispered to George,“Address him as ‘Honorable’.”

George swallowed with difficulty. This was it.

George felt himself going moist with perspiration. The thought had come so recently, yet it was in him now so certainly. The beginnings of it had come when he had spoken to Trevelyan, then everything had fermented and billowed into shape while Ingenescu had prattled, and then the Novian’s own remarks had seemed to nail it all into place.

George said, “Honorable, I’ve come to show you the exit from the merry-go-round.” Deliberately, he adopted the Novian’s own metaphor.

The Novian stared at him gravely. “What merry-go-round?”

“You yourself mentioned it, Honorable. The merry-go-round that Novia is on when you come to Earth to – to get technicians.” (He couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering; from excitement not fear.)

The Novian said, “You’re trying to say that you know a way by which we can avoid patronizing Earth’s mental super-market. Is that it?”

“Yes, sir. You can control your own Educational system.”

“Umm. Without tapes?”

“Y – yes, Honorable.”

The Novian, without taking his eyes from George, called out, “Ingenescu, get into view.”

The Historian moved to where he could be seen over George’s shoulder.

The Novian said, “What is this? I don’t seem to penetrate.”

“I assure you solemnly,” said Ingenescu, “that whatever this is it is being done on the young man’s own initiative, Honorable. I have not inspired this. I have nothing to do with it.”

“Well, then, what is the young man to you? Why do you call me on his behalf?”

Ingenescu said, “He is an object of study, Honorable. He has value to me and I humor him.”

“What kind of value?”

“It’s difficult to explain; a matter of my profession.” The Novian laughed shortly. “Well, to each his profession.” He nodded to an invisible person or persons outside plate range. “There’s a young man here, a protégé of Ingenescu or some such thing, who will explain to us how to Educate without tapes.” He snapped his fingers, and another glass of pale liqueur appeared in his hand. “Well, young man?”

The faces on the plate were multiple now. Men and women, both, crammed in for a view of George, their faces molded into various shades of amusement and curiosity.

George tried to look disdainful. They were all, in their own ways, Novians as well as the Earthman, ‘studying’ him as though he were a bug on a pin. Ingenescu was sitting in a corner, now, watching him owl-eyed.

Fools, he thought tensely, one and all. But they would have to understand. He would make them understand.

He said, “I was at the Metallurgist Olympics this afternoon.”

“You, too?’ said the Novian blandly. “It seems all Earth was there.”

“No, Honorable, but I was. I had a friend who competed and who made out very badly because you were using the Beeman machines. His education had included only the Henslers, apparently an older model. You said the modification involved was slight.” George held up two fingers close together in conscious mimicry of the other’s previous gesture. “And my friend had known some time in advance that knowledge of the Beeman machines would be required.”

“And what does that signify?”

“It was my friend’s lifelong ambition to qualify for Novia. He already knew the Henslers. He had to know the Beemans to qualify and he knew that. To learn about the Beemans would have taken just a few more facts, a bit more data, a small amount of practice perhaps. With a life’s ambition riding the scale, he might have managed this –”�

“And where would he have obtained a tape for the additional facts and data? Or has Education become a private matter for home study here on Earth?”

There was dutiful laughter from the faces in the background.

George said, “That’s why he didn’t learn, Honorable. He thought he needed a tape. He wouldn’t even try without one, no matter what the prize. He refused to try without a tape.”

“Refused, eh? Probably the type of fellow who would refuse to fly without a skimmer.” More laughter and the Novian thawed into a smile and said, “The fellow is amusing. Go on. I’ll give you another few moments.”

George said tensely, “Don’t think this is a joke. Tapes are actually bad. They teach too much; they’re too painless. A man who learns that way doesn’t know how to learn any other way. He’s frozen into whatever position he’s been taped. Now if a person weren't given tapes but were forced to learn by hand, so to speak, from the start; why, then he’d get the habit of learning, and continue to learn. Isn’t that reasonable? Once he has the habit well developed he can be given just a small amount of tape-knowledge, perhaps, to fill in gaps or fix details. Then he can make further progress on his own. You can make Beeman Metallurgists out of your own Hensler Metallurgists in that way and not have to come to Earth for new models.”

The Novian nodded and sipped at his drink. “And where does everyone get knowledge without tapes? From interstellar vacuum?”

“From books. By studying the instruments themselves. By thinking.”

“Books? How does one understand books without Education?”

“Books are in words. Words can be understood for the most part. Specialized words can be explained by the technicians you already have.”

“What about reading? Will you allow reading tapes?”

“Reading tapes are all right, I suppose but there’s no reason you can’t learn to read the old way, too. At least in part.”

The Novian said, “So that you can develop good habits from the start?”

“Yes, yes,” George said gleefully. The man was beginning to understand.

“And what about mathematics?”

“That’s the easiest of all, sir – Honorable. Mathematics is different from other technical subjects. It starts with certain simple principles and proceeds by steps. You Can start with nothing and learn. It’s practically designed for that. Then, once you know the proper types of mathematics, other technical books become quite understandable. Especially if you start with easy ones.”

“Are there easy books?”

“Definitely. Even if there weren’t, the technicians you now have can try to write easy books. Some of them might be able to put some of their knowledge into words and symbols.”

“Good Lord,” said the Novian to the men clustered about him. “ The young devil has an answer for everything.”

“I have. I have,’ shouted George. “Ask me.”

“Have you tried learning from books yourself? Or is this just theory with you?”

George turned to look quickly at Ingenescu, but the Historian was passive. There was no sign of anything but gentle interest in his face.

George said,“I have.”

“And do you find it works?”

“Yes, Honorable,” said George eagerly. “Take me with you to Novia. I can set up a program and direct –”�

“Wait I have a few more questions. How long would it take, do you suppose, for you to become a Metallurgist capable of handling a Beeman machine, supposing you started from nothing and did not use Educational tapes?”

George hesitated. “Well – years, perhaps.”

“Two years? Five? Ten?”

“I can’t say, Honorable.”

“Well, there’s a vital question to which you have no answer, have you? Shall we say five years? Does that sound reasonable to you?”

“I suppose so.”

“All right. We have a technician studying metallurgy according to this method of yours for five years. He’s no good to us during that time, you’ll admit but he must be fed and housed and paid all that time.”

“But –”�

“Let me finish. Then when he’s done and can use the Beeman, five years have passed. Don’t you suppose we’ll have modified Beemans then which he won’t be able to use?”

“But by then he’ll be expert on learning. He could learn the new details necessary in a matter of days.”

“So you say. And suppose this friend of yours, for instance, had studied up on Beemans on his own and managed to learn it; would he be as expert in its use as a competitor who had learned it off the tapes?”

“Maybe not –”� began George.

“Ah,” said the Novian.

“Wait, let me finish. Even if he doesn’t know something as well, it’s the ability to learn further that’s important. He may be able to think up things, new things that no tape-Educated man would. You’ll have a reservoir of original thinkers – ”�

“In your studying,” said the Novian, “have you thought up any new things?”

“No, but I’m just one man and I haven’t studied long –”�

“Yes. – Well, ladies, gentlemen, have we been sufficiently amused?”

“Wait,” cried George, in sudden panic.“I want to arrange a personal interview. There are things I can’t explain over the visiphone. There are details –”�

The Novian looked past George. “Ingenescu! I think I have done you your favor. Now, really, I have a heavy schedule tomorrow. Be well!”

The screen went blank.

George’s hands shot out toward the screen, as though in a wild impulse to shake life back into it. He cried out, “He didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe me.”

Ingenescu said, “No, George. Did you really think he would?”

George scarcely heard him. “But why not? It’s all true. It’s all so much to his advantage. No risk. I and a few men to work with – A dozen men training for years would cost less than one technician. – He was drunk! Drunk! He didn’t understand.”

George looked about breathlessly. “How do I get to him? I’ve got to. This was wrong. Shouldn’t have used the visiphone. I need time. Face to face. How do I-”

Ingenescu said, “He won’t see you, George. And if he did, he wouldn’t believe you.”

“He will, I tell you. When he isn’t drinking. He-” George turned squarely toward the Historian and his eyes widened. “Why do you call me George?”

“Isn’t that your name? George Platen?”

“You know me?”

“All about you.”

George was motionless except for the breath pumping his chest wall up and down.

Ingenescu said, “I want to help you, George. I told you that. I’ve been studying you and I want to help you.”

George screamed, “I don’t need help. I’m not feeble-minded. The whole world is, but I’m not.” He whirled and dashed madly for the door.

He flung it open and two policemen roused themselves suddenly from their guard duty and seized him.

For all George’s straining, he could feel the hypo-spray at the fleshy point just under the corner of his jaw, and that was it. The last thing he remembered was the face of Ingenescu, watching with gentle concern.

George opened his eyes to the whiteness of a ceiling. He remembered what had happened. He remembered it distantly as though it had happened to somebody else. He stared at the ceiling till the whiteness filled his eyes and washed his brain clean, leaving room, it seemed, for new thought and new ways of thinking.

He didn’t know how long he lay there so, listening to the drift of his own thinking.

There was a voice in his ear. “Are you awake?”

And George heard his own moaning for the first time. Had he been moaning? He tried to turn his head.

The voice said, “Are you in pain, George?”

George whispered, “Funny. I was so anxious to leave Earth. I didn’t understand.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Back in the – the House.” George managed to turn. The voice belonged to Omani.

George said, “It’s funny I didn’t understand.”

Omani smiled gently, “Sleep again –”�

George slept.

And woke again. His mind was clear.

Omani sat at the bedside reading, but he put down the book as George’s eyes opened.

George struggled to a sitting position. He said, “Hello.”

“Are you hungry?”

“You bet.” He stared at Omani curiously. “I was followed when I left, wasn’t I?”

Omani nodded. “You were under observation at all times. We were going to maneuver you to Antonelli and let you discharge your aggressions. We felt that to be the way you could make progress. Your emotions were clogging your advance.”

George said, with a trace of embarrassment, “I was all wrong about him.”

“It doesn’t matter now. When you stopped to stare at the Metallurgy notice board at the airport, one of our agents reported back the list of names. You and I had talked about your past sufficiently so that I caught the significance of Trevelyan’s name there. You asked for directions to the Olympics; there was the possibility that this might result in the kind of crisis we were hoping for; we sent Ladislas Ingenescu to the hall to meet you and take over.”

“He’s an important man in the government, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.”

“And you had him take over. It makes me sound important.”

“You are important, George.”

A thick stew had arrived, steaming, fragrant. George grinned wolfishly and pushed his sheets back to free his arms. Omani helped arrange the bed-table. For a while, George ate silently.

Then George said, “I woke up here once before just for a short time.”

Omani said, “I know. I was here.”

“Yes, I remember. You know, everything was changed. It was as though I was too tired to feel emotion. I wasn’t angry any more. I could just think. It was as though I had been drugged to wipe out emotion.”

“You weren’t,” said Omani. “Just sedation. You had rested.”

“Well, anyway, it was all clear to me, as though I had known it all the time but wouldn’t listen to myself. I thought: What was it I had wanted Novia to let me do? I had wanted to go to Novia and take a batch of un-Educated youngsters and teach them out of books. I had wanted to establish a House for the Feeble-rninded – like here – and Earth already has them – many of them.”

Omani’s white teeth gleamed as he smiled. “The Institute of Higher Studies is the correct name for places like this.”

“Now I see it,” said George, “so easily I am amazed at my blindness before. After all, who invents the new instrument models that require new-model technicians? Who invented the Beeman spectrographs, for instance? A man called Beeman, I suppose, but he couldn’t have been tape-Educated or how could he have made the advance?”

“Exactly.”

“Or who makes Educational tapes? Special tape-making technicians? Then who makes the tapes to train them? More advanced technicians? Then who makes the tapes – You see what I mean. Somewhere there has to be an end. Somewhere there must be men and women with capacity for original thought.”

“Yes, George.”

George leaned back, stared over Omani’s head, and for a moment there was the return of something like restlessness to his eyes.

“Why wasn’t I told all this at the beginning?”

“Oh, if we could,” said Omani, “the trouble it would save us. We can analyze a mind, George, and say this one will make an adequate architect and that one a good woodworker. We know of no way of detecting the capacity for original, creative thought? It is too subtle a thing. We have some rule-of-thumb methods that mark out individuals who may possibly or potentially have such a talent.

“On Reading Day, such individuals are reported. You were, for instance. Roughly speaking, the number so reported comes to one in ten thousand. By the time Education Day arrives, these individuals are checked again, and nine out of ten of them turn out to have been false alarms. Those who remain are sent to places like this.”

George said, “Well, what’s wrong with telling people that one out of – of a hundred thousand will end at places like these? Then it won’t be such a shock to those who do.”

“And those who don’t? The ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine that don’t? We can’t have all those people considering themselves failures. They aim at the professions and one way or another they all make it. Everyone can place after his or her name: Registered something-or-other. In one fashion or another every individual has his or her place in society and this is necessary.”

“But we?” said George. “The one in one hundred thousand exception?”

“You can’t be told. That’s exactly it. It’s the final test. Even after we’ve thinned out the possibilities on Education Day, nine out of ten of those who come here are not quite the material of creative genius, and there’s no way we can distinguish those nine from the tenth that we want by any form of machinery. The tenth one must tell us himself.”

“How?”

“We bring you here to a House for the Feeble-minded and the man who won’t accept that is the man we want. It’s a method that can be cruel but it works. It won’t do to say to a man, ‘You can create. Do so.’ It is much safer to wait for a man to say, ‘I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not.’ There are ten thousand men like you, George, who support the advancing technology of fifteen hundred worlds. We can’t allow ourselves to miss one recruit to that number or waste our efforts on one member who doesn’t measure up.”

George pushed his empty plate out of the way and lifted a cup of coffee to his lips.

“What about the people here who don’t – measure up?”

“They are taped eventually and become our Social Scientists. Ingenescu is one. I am a Registered Psychologist. We are second echelon, so to speak.”

George finished his coffee. He said, “I still wonder about one thing?”

“What is that?”

George threw aside the sheet and stood up. “Why do they call them Olympics?”