[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

were so unscientific as to be a psychologist, I'd speculate that you were a
bit envious and felt threatened. And since I've already made my tool and it
works very well, I'd be perfectly delighted for you to expel me from this
university, and I'll just go to Sector H-88 to publish my papers and patent
the machines."
Whickit was furious; he shouted, he resented, he plotted, he undermined. But
Stipock had already won. His tools did all he meant them to, and Whickit
quickly discovered that the administration would trade twenty Whickits for one
Stipock any day.
And they offered Stipock somec.
"We need to keep you alive," the Sleeproom people said. "You're one of the
ten or twenty most valuable minds in this century. We need to let you live
for centuries so you can help answer the questions that arise then."
Stipock said no. "I'm working on several projects that no one can complete
except me, and if they could I wouldn't want them to. Come see me when the
projects are finished."
The Sleeproom people weren't used to being refused, but his reasons were
plausible, and he was only fifteen, and so they waited.
But Garol's reasons were not what he said they were.
"Mother," he said. "Father. They've offered me somec."
He watched his parents carefully. Somec was the worst sin of all the sins of
Capitol, and Amblick and the other prophets had condemned it as the
Souldestroyer, the Hatemaker, Somec the Lifestealer. Garol knew enough
science to know that God was impossible; knew enough of life to know that no
one believed in God and few enough remembered he had ever existed in people's
hearts. But all that knowledge had never undone the structure of his
childhood: sex for pleasure was still unthinkable, somec was still a sin.
And so he watched his parent to see if they, too, still held on to a measure
of the old faith.
"Somec?" asked his father. "What level?"
"Seven under, one up."
"That's high," his mother said.
His father looked at his mother for a moment, and then, rather awkwardly, he
asked, "Garol, I understand that someone who's at that high a level can choose
several close family members to go on somec with him at the same level, so
that his life isn't too disrupted."
"Yes," his mother said. "And we're all the family you have."
Their eyes were bright with hope, and Garol felt the last of the religion
crash down inside himself. He felt angry, betrayed, hurt; but all he said
was, "Of course. I won't be going on for a few years, but you can come with
me."
"A few years?" asked his mother. "Why?"
"I have work to do."
His father coughed, looked a little upset. "It's your right, I suppose. But
remember, Garol, that while you're still young, we're getting a bit on in
years."
Garol did nothing to show his contempt. The next day he went to the Sleeproom
and told them that he would go on somec in three years, but he wanted his
parents to go on somec now.
"But Mr. Stipock," said the man at the Sleeproom, "they can only go on somec
at precisely the same level as you. So if they went on now and you went on in
three years, they would never see you again. They'd always be asleep when you
awoke, and vice-versa."
Garol tapped the desk. "Draw it up, and I'll sign it."
They drew it up, he signed it, and his parents went to the Sleeproom happily,
knowing that they were the envy of all their friends. They hadn't even asked
whether Garol would be awake when they awoke. Perhaps they merely took it for
granted and would be terribly disappointed. But Garol simply assumed they
didn't care. And neither, he pretended, did he.
The Stipock Low-Density Radiation Counter was a revolution in physics. Now,
because an extremely sensitive machine could detect infinitesimal amounts of
radiation from the most inert elements, it was possible to analyze practically
to the molecule the makeup of any sample -- whether it was a small rock or the
light from a star millions of light-years away.
Garol's new work was more that of a cataloguer than of a scientist -- but he
was unable to perceive much difference between theory and practice of science,
and saw no contradiction in it. He set up the programs for the Stipock
Geologer, which would analyze planets from orbit and lay out incredibly
detailed maps of metals, ores, and topography; the Stipock Ecologer, which
analyzed the lifesystem of a planet in a single orbit; and the Stipock Climate
Analyzer, which could predict weather for a year in advance with fair
accuracy, and climatic trends for centuries with near perfect accuracy. It
would take years to make the machines work well, but once Garol's groundwork
was done, the details could be fleshed out by thousands of much less talented
researchers.
It was not work that involved Garol's mind completely, and it seemed to those
few who knew him at all well that he seemed determined to keep his mind as
disengaged as possible. He asked the wife of a professor to explain sex to
him; she did, and they kept practicing for a few weeks before he set out to
experience as much of it as possible with as many different partners as
possible.
"You don't seem to pay any attention when we make love," a fellow graduate
student complained one night.
"Was it good?" he asked.
"Wonderful," she said. "But -- "
"Then don't ask for more than that," he said. She soon stopped sleeping with
him, however, which he told her was stupid. "What do you expect out of sex,"
he asked, "emotional involvement?"
"Yes," she answered. "Though how anyone could expect emotional involvement
from you I'll never know."
If any of those observing him had had a religious background, they would have
seen the pattern he was following. But how could any of them know that there
was something unusual about Garol immersing himself briefly in the study of
business and then systematically turning the millions he earned from royalties
on his Low-Density Radiation Counter into billions by investing wisely but
daringly in the marketplace.
He briefly played wargames, until he won enough that he got bored. He tried
every liquor made and got drunk several times, until he decided that he didn't
like it much and quit again. He watched lifeloops to an extent that brought
ridicule from fellow students (they briefly nicknamed him Soapwatcher). He
even tried homosexuality, though it wasn't fashionable then, and he soon gave
it up.
If anyone had understood the meaning behind his behavior, had thought it was
anything more than adolescent experimentation coupled with a brilliant mind,
his continuing refusal to go on somec would have caused some alarm. His
religion was still, to some degree, controlling him. He knew it; but the fear
of somec was not easy to overcome, and so he played hard and worked hard and
still had half his mind unused so it could worry constantly about his
appointment with the Sleeproom.
"Your contract, Mr. Stipock, says you must enter the Sleeproom in four days.
We thought it would be good to remind you so you'd be certain to have your
affairs in order."
"Thank you," Garol said, and celebrated his nineteenth birthday by burning the
copy of the Word that he had kept all these years. It set off a smoke alarm
in his apartment because he was known to be a nonsmoker, and it took three
hours to convince the firemen that not only were they not needed, but the
damned sprinklers had ruined his furniture.
"Just step in here," said the young woman, "and take off your clothes."
Stipock followed her into a room in the Tape and Tap that was equipped with a
soft chair and a wheeled bed and several hooks to hang his clothing. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]