Campbell, John W Jr - Elimination

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Elimination

john gbantland looked across at his old friend's son intently and unhappily. Finally he sighed heavily and leaned back

in his swivel chair. He lighted his pipe thoughtfully. Two slow puffs of smoke rose before he spoke.

"I'm a patent attorney, Dwight Edwards, and I'm at your dis-posal, as such, to do your bidding and help

you to secure that pat-( ent you want. As you know, I'm also a civil-and-commercial-law ex-pert of some

standing in connection with that work. I can get that patent; I know it is patentable and unpatented as yet.

But before I start proceedings, I have to tell you something, Dwight.

"You have enough to live on the rest of your life, a brilliant mind to increase it, a scientific ability to keep

you occupied and useful to the world. This invention is not useful to the world. If you were a poor man, I

would not hesitate in making the patent applications, because some wiser men, with more money, would buy

it up and destroy the thing. But you aren't poor, and you would hold out till the thing was developed and

going."

"But—but Mr. Grantland, it's a thing the world needs! We have a fast-vanishing gasoline reserve—a

coal supply being drawn on end-lessly and recklessly. We need a new source of power, something to make

the immense water-power supplies in inaccessible regions available. The system would do that, and

conserve those vanishing resources, run automobiles, planes, even small factories and homes—"

"It would destroy our greatest resource, the financial structure of the nation. A resource is not a resource unless it is

available, and only the system makes it available. The system is more valuable, more important to human happiness than any

other resource, be-cause it makes all others available.

"I know your natural desire, to develop and spread that system for canning and distributing electricity.

It's a great invention. But—"

"But," the younger man said somewhat bitterly, "you feel that any really great, any important invention

should be destroyed. There must be, you are saying, no real improvement, only little gadgets. There must be

no Faradays who discover principles, only Sam Browns who invent new can openers and better

mousetraps."

Grantland laid down his pipe and leaned back in his chair silently.

Bitterly, the younger man was gathering his papers.

"Dwight," said Grantland at length, "I think I'll do best if I tell you of one invention that I have in my files

here. I have shown these papers to just one other man than the men who made them. Curiously, he was

your father. He—"

"My father? But he was not an inventor—he was a psychiatrist, utterly uninterested—"

"He was vitally interested in this. He saw the apparatus they made, and he helped me dismantle it,

secretly, and destroy the tube Hugh Kerry and Robert Darnell made. That was twenty-two years ago, and

it was something of a miracle I had, at the age of thirty-six, the sense to do that.

Tin going to tell you mighty vague things and mighty vague principles, because you're too keen. It isn't

very safe to tell you this, but I believe you will keep a promise. You must swear two things before I tell you

the story: First, that you will not put that surpris-ingly acute mind of yours to work on what I say, because I

cannot tell what clues I may give. I understand too little to know how much I understood; second, of course,

that you will not spread this unpleasant story."

The young man put down his papers, looked curiously at John Grantland. "I agree to that, Mr.

Grantland."

Grantland stuffed his pipe thoughtfully in silence. "Hugh Kerry and Bob Darnell were one of those

fortuitous miracles, where the right combination came together. Hugh Kerry was the greatest

mathematician the world has seen, at thirty-two."

"I have heard of him; I've used his analytical methods. He died at thirty-three, didn't he?"

"I know," said Grantland. "The point is—so did Bob Darnell. Bob Darnell was something like Edison, on

a higher level. Edison could translate theory into metal and glass and matter. Darnell could do that, but he

didn't work with steel and copper and glass. He worked with atoms and electrons and radiation as familiarly

as Edi-

son worked with metal. And Darnell didn't work from theory; he worked from mathematics that no

theory could be defined for.

"That was the pair the shifting probabilities of space time brought together—and separated. You've

never heard of Darnell, because he did only one thing, and that one thing is on paper there, in that steel

vault. In the first place, it is in a code that is burned into my memory, and not on paper. In the second place,

it is safe because every equation in it is wrong, because we couldn't code equations easily, and the book

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Campbell, John W Jr - Elimination

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