Asimov, Isaac - The Complete Stories - Volume 1

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Contents

FOUNDATION, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of the letter F are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday

Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

This volume contains the complete contents of the previoush/ published collections Earth Is Room Enough, Nine

Tomorrows, and Nightfall and Other Stories.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBH 0-385-41606-7

Introduction vii

The Dead Past 3

The Foundation of S.F. Success 41

Franchise 43

Gimmicks Three 57

Kid Stuff 62

The Watery Place 73

Living Space 77

The Message 89

Satisfaction Guaranteed 91

Hell-Fire 104

The Last Trump 106

The Fun They Had 120

Jokester 123

The Immortal Bard 135

Someday 138

The Author's Ordeal 146

Dreaming Is a Private Thing 149

Profession 162

The Feeling of Power 208

The Dying Night 217

I'm in Marsport Without Hilda 239

The Gentle Vultures 250

All the Troubles of the World 263

Spell My Name with an 5 277

The Last Question 290

The Ugly Little Boy 301

Nightfall 334

Green Patches 363

Hostess 376

"Breeds There a Man . . . ?" 408

C-Chute 438

"In a Good Cause—" 468

What If— 489

Sally 500

Flies 515

"Nobody Here but—" 521

It's Such a Beautiful Day 531

Strikebreaker 550

Insert Knob A in Hole B 561

The Up-to-Date Sorcerer 563

Unto the Fourth Generation 575

What Is This Thing Called Love? 582

The Machine That Won the War 593

My Son, the Physicist 598

Eyes Do More than See 602

Segregationist 605

I Just Make Them Up, See! 610

Rejection Slips 613

Introduction

I have been writing short stories for fifty-one years and I haven't yet quit. In addition to the hundreds of

short stories I have published, there are at least a dozen in press waiting to be published, and two stories written

and not yet submitted. So I have by no means retired.

There is, however, no way one can publish short stories for this length of time without understanding that

the time left to him is limited. In the words of the song: "Forevermore is shorter than before."

It is time, therefore, for Doubleday to pull the strings together and get all my fiction—short stories and

novels, too—into a definitive form and in uniform bindings, both in hard and soft covers.

It may sound conceited of me to say so (I am frequently accused of being conceited), but my fiction

generally has been popular from the start and has continued to be well received through the years. To locate any

one story, however, that you no longer have and wish you did, or to find one you have heard about but have

missed is no easy task. My stories appeared originally in any one of many magazines, the original issues of

which are all but unobtainable. They then appeared in any of a multiplicity of anthologies and collections,

copies of which are almost as unobtainable.

It is Doubleday's intention to make this multivolume collection definitive and uniform in the hope that the

science fiction public, the mystery public (for my many mysteries will also be collected), and libraries as well will

seize upon them ravenously and clear their book shelves to make room for Isaac Asimav: The Complete Stories.

We begin in this volume with two of my early collections from the 1950s, Earth Is Room Enough and Nine

Tomorrows.

The former includes such favorites of mine as "Franchise," which deals with the ultimate election day;

"Living Space," which gives every family a world of its own; "The Fun They Had," my most anthologized

story; "Jokester," whose ending I bet you don't anticipate if you've never read the story before; and "Dreaming

Is a Private Thing," concerning which Robert A. Heinlein accused me of making money out of my own

neuroses.

Nine Tomorrows, the personal favorite of all my collections, contains not one story I don't consider to be

excellent examples of my productions of the 1950s. In particular, there is "The Last Question," which, of all the

stories I have written, is my absolute favorite.

Then there is "The Ugly Little Boy," my third-favorite story. My tales tend to be cerebral, but I count on

this one to bring about a tear or two. (To find out which is the second-favorite of my stories, you'll have to read

successive volumes of this collection.) "The Feeling of Power" is another frequently anthologized piece and is

rather prophetic, considering it was written before anyone was thinking of pocket computers. "All the Troubles

of the World" is a suspense story and "The Dying Night" is a mystery based, alas, on an astronomical "fact"

now known to be quite mistaken.

Then there is a later collection included here, Nightfall and Other Stories, which features "Nightfall," a story

that many readers and the Science Fiction Writers of America have voted the best science fiction story ever

written (I don't think so, but it would be impolite to argue). Other favorites of mine are " 'Breeds There a Man . .

. ?' ", which is rather chilling; "Sally," which expresses my feelings about automobiles; "Strikebreaker," which I

consider much underappreciated; and "Eyes Do More than See," a short heartstring wrencher.

There'll be more volumes, but begin by reading this one. You will make an old man very happy, you know.

—ISAAC ASIMOV

New York City

March 1990

ISAAC ASIMOV

THE COMPLETE STORIES

Volume 1

The Dead Past

Arnold Potterley, Ph.D., was a Professor of Ancient History. That, in itself, was not dangerous. What changed the world

beyond all dreams was the fact that he looked like a Professor of Ancient History.

Thaddeus Araman, Department Head of the Division of Chronoscopy, might have taken proper action if Dr.

Potterley had been owner .of a large, square chin, flashing eyes, aquiline nose and broad shoulders.

As it was, Thaddeus Araman found himself staring over his desk at a mild-mannered individual, whose faded blue eyes

looked at him wistfully from either side of a low-bridged button nose; whose small, neatly dressed figure seemed stamped

"milk-and-water" from thinning brown hair to the neatly brushed shoes that completed a conservative middle-class

costume.

Araman said pleasantly, "And now what can I do for you, Dr. Potterley?"

Dr. Potterley said in a soft voice that went well with the rest of him, "Mr. Araman, I came to you because you're top

man in chronoscopy."

Araman smiled. "Not exactly. Above me is the World Commissioner of Research and above him is the Secretary-

General of the United Nations. And above both of them, of course, are the sovereign peoples of Earth."

Dr. Potterley shook his head. "They're not interested in chronoscopy. I've come to you, sir, because for two years I have

been trying to obtain permission to do some time viewing—chronoscopy, that is—in connection with my researches on

ancient Carthage. I can't obtain such permission. My research grants are all proper. There is no irregularity in any of my

intellectual endeavors and yet—"

"I'm sure there is no question of irregularity," said Araman soothingly. He flipped the thin reproduction sheets in

the folder to which Potterley's name had been attached. They had been produced by Multivac, whose vast analogical mind

kept all the department records. When this was over, the sheets could be destroyed, then reproduced on demand in a matter

of minutes.

And while Araman turned the pages, Dr. Potterley's voice continued in a soft monotone.

The historian was saying, "I must explain that my problem is quite an important one. Carthage was ancient

commercialism brought to its zenith. Pre-Roman Carthage was the nearest ancient analogue to pre-atomic America, at least

insofar as its attachment to trade, commerce and business in general was concerned. They were the most daring seamen

and explorers before the Vikings; much better at it than the overrated Greeks.

"To know Carthage would be very rewarding, yet the only knowledge we have of it is derived from the writings of its

bitter enemies, the Greeks and Romans. Carthage itself never wrote in its own defense or, if it did, the books did not

survive. As a result, the Carthaginians have been one of the favorite sets of villains of history and perhaps unjustly so. Time

viewing may set the record straight."

He said much more.

Araman said, still turning the reproduction sheets before him, "You must realize, Dr. Potterley, that chronoscopy, or

time viewing, if you prefer, is a difficult process."

Dr. Potterley, who had been interrupted, frowned and said, "I am asking for only certain selected views at times and

places I would indicate."

Araman sighed. "Even a few views, even one ... It is an unbelievably delicate art. There is the question of focus,

getting the proper scene in view and holding it. There is the synchronization of sound, which calls for completely

independent circuits."

"Surely my problem is important enough to justify considerable effort."

"Yes, sir. Undoubtedly," said Araman at once. To deny the importance of someone's research problem would be

unforgivably bad manners. "But you must understand how long-drawn-out even the simplest view is. And there is a long

waiting line for the chronoscope and an even longer waiting line for the use of Multivac which guides us in our use of the

controls."

Potterley stirred unhappily. "But can nothing be done? For two years—"

"A matter of priority, sir. I'm sorry. . . . Cigarette?"

The historian started back at the suggestion, eyes suddenly widening as he stared at the pack thrust out toward him.

Araman looked surprised, withdrew the pack, made a motion as though to take a cigarette for himself and thought better of

it. Potterley drew a sigh of unfeigned relief as the pack was put out of sight.

He said, "Is there any way of reviewing matters, putting me as far forward as possible. I don't know how to explain—"

Araman smiled. Some had offered money under similar circumstances which, of course, had gotten them nowhere,

either. He said, "The decisions on priority are computer-processed. I could in no way alter those decisions arbitrarily."

Potterley rose stiffly to his feet. He stood five and a half feet tall. "Then, good day, sir."

"Good day, Dr. Potterley. And my sincerest regrets."

He offered his hand and Potterley touched it briefly.

The historian left, and a touch of the buzzer brought Araman's secretary into the room. He handed her the folder.

"These," he said, "may be disposed of."

Alone again, he smiled bitterly. Another item in his quarter-century's service to the human race. Service through

negation.

At least this fellow had been easy to dispose of. Sometimes academic pressure had to be applied and even

withdrawal of grants.

Five minutes later, he had forgotten Dr. Potterley. Nor, thinking back on it later, could he remember feeling any

premonition of danger.

During the first year of his frustration, Arnold Potterley had experienced only that—frustration. During the second

year, though, his frustration gave birth to an idea that first frightened and then fascinated him. Two things stopped him

from trying to translate the idea into action, and neither barrier was the undoubted fact that his notion was a grossly

unethical one.

The first was merely the continuing hope that the government would finally give its permission and make it

unnecessary for him to do anything more. That hope had perished finally in the interview with Araman just completed.

The second barrier had been not a hope at all but a dreary realization of his own incapacity. He was not a physicist

and he knew no physicists from whom he might obtain help. The Department of Physics at the university consisted of

men well stocked with grants and well immersed in specialty. At best, they would not listen to him. At worst, they would

report him for intellectual anarchy and even his basic Carthaginian grant might easily be withdrawn.

That he could not risk. And yet chronoscopy was the only way to carry on his work. Without it, he would be no worse

off if his grant were lost.

The first hint that the second barrier might be overcome had come a week earlier than his interview with Araman,

and it had gone unrecognized at the time. It had been at one of the faculty teas. Potterley attended these sessions

unfailingly because he conceived attendance to be a duty, and he took his duties seriously. Once there, however, he

conceived it to be no responsibility of his to make light conversation or new friends. He sipped abstemiously at a drink

or two, exchanged a polite word with the dean or

such department heads as happened to be present, bestowed a narrow smile on others and finally left early.

Ordinarily, he would have paid no attention, at that most recent tea, to a young man standing quietly, even diffidently,

in one corner. He would never have dreamed of speaking to him. Yet a tangle of circumstance persuaded him this once to

behave in a way contrary to his nature.

That morning at breakfast, Mrs. Potterley had announced somberly that once again she had dreamed of Laurel; but

this time a Laurel grown up, yet retaining the three-year-old face that stamped her as their child. Potterley had let her talk.

There had been a time when he fought her too frequent preoccupation with the past and death. Laurel would not

come back to them, either through dreams or through talk. Yet if it appeased Caroline Potterley—let her dream and talk.

But when Potterley went to school that morning, he found himself for once affected by Caroline's inanities. Laurel

grown up! She had died nearly twenty years ago; their only child, then and ever. In all that time, when he thought of her, it

was as a three-year-old.

Now he thought: But if she were alive now, she wouldn't be three, she'd be nearly twenty-three.

Helplessly, he found himself trying to think of Laurel as growing progressively older; as finally becoming twenty-three.

He did not quite succeed.

Yet he tried. Laurel using make-up. Laurel going out with boys. Laurel— getting married!

So it was that when he saw the young man hovering at the outskirts of the coldly circulating group of faculty men, it

occurred to him quixotically that, for all he knew, a youngster just such as this might have married Laurel. That

youngster himself, perhaps. . . .

Laurel might have met him, here at the university, or some evening when he might be invited to dinner at the

Potterleys'. They might grow interested in one another. Laurel would surely have been pretty and this youngster looked

well. He was dark in coloring, with a lean intent face and an easy carriage.

The tenuous daydream snapped, yet Potterley found himself staring foolishly at the young man, not as a strange face but

as a possible son-in-law in the might-have-been. He found himself threading his way toward the man. It was almost a form

of autohypnotism.

He put out his hand. "I am Arnold Potterley of the History Department. You're new here, I think?"

The youngster looked faintly astonished and fumbled with his drink, shifting it to his left hand in order to shake

with his right. "Jonas Foster is my name, sir. I'm a new instructor in physics. I'm just starting this semester."

Potterley nodded. "I wish you a happy stay here and great success."

That was the end of it, then. Potterley had come uneasily to his senses,

found himself embarrassed and moved off. He stared back over his shoulder once, but the illusion of relationship had

gone. Reality was quite real once more and he was angry with himself for having fallen prey to his wife's foolish talk

about Laurel.

But a week later, even while Araman was talking, the thought of that young man had come back to him. An

instructor in physics. A new instructor. Had he been deaf at the time? Was there a short circuit between ear and brain?

Or was it an automatic self-censorship because of the impending interview with the Head of Chronoscopy?

But the interview failed, and it was the thought of the young man with whom he had exchanged two sentences that

prevented Potterley from elaborating his pleas for consideration. He was almost anxious to get away.

And in the autogiro express back to the university, he could almost wish he were superstitious. He could then console

himself with the thought that the casual meaningless meeting had really been directed by a knowing and purposeful Fate.

Jonas Foster was not new to academic life. The long and rickety struggle for the doctorate would make anyone a

veteran. Additional work as a postdoctorate teaching fellow acted as a booster shot.

But now he was Instructor Jonas Foster. Professorial dignity lay ahead. And he now found himself in a new sort of

relationship toward other professors.

For one thing, they would be voting on future promotions. For another, he was in no position to tell so early in the

game which particular member of the faculty might or might not have the ear of the dean or even of the university

president. He did not fancy himself as a campus politician and was sure he would make a poor one, yet there was no

point in kicking his own rear into blisters just to prove that to himself.

So Foster listened to this mild-mannered historian who, in some vague way, seemed nevertheless to radiate

tension, and did not shut him up abruptly and toss him out. Certainly that was his first impulse.

He remembered Potterley well enough. Potterley had approached him at that tea (which had been a grizzly affair). The

fellow had spoken two sentences to him stiffly, somehow glassy-eyed, had then come to himself with a visible start and

hurried off.

It had amused Foster at the time, but now . . .

Potterley might have been deliberately trying to make his acquaintance, or, rather, to impress his own personality on

Foster as that of a queer sort of duck, eccentric but harmless. He might now be probing Foster's views, searching for

unsettling opinions. Surely, they ought to have done so before granting him his appointment. Still . . .

Potterley might be serious, might honestly not realize what he was doing.

Or he might realize quite well what he was doing; he might be nothing more or less than a dangerous rascal.

Foster mumbled, "Well, now—" to gain time, and fished out a package of cigarettes, intending to offer one to

Potterley and to light it and one for himself very slowly.

But Potterley said at once, "Please, Dr. Foster. No cigarettes."

Foster looked startled. "I'm sorry, sir." ;,

"No. The regrets are mine. I cannot stand the odor. An idiosyncrasy. I'm sorry."

He was positively pale. Foster put away the cigarettes.

Foster, feeling the absence of the cigarette, took the easy way out. "I'm flattered that you ask my advice and

all that, Dr. Potterley, but I'm not a neutrinics man. I can't very well do anything professional in that direction.

Even stating an opinion would be out of line, and, frankly, I'd prefer that you didn't go into any particulars."

The historian's prim face set hard. "What do you mean, you're not a neutrinics man? You're not anything

yet. You haven't received any grant, have you?"

"This is only my first semester."

"I know that. I imagine you haven't even applied for any grant yet."

Foster half-smiled. In three months at the university, he had not succeeded in putting his initial requests for

research grants into good enough shape to pass on to a professional science writer, let alone to the Research

Commission.

(His Department Head, fortunately, took it quite well. "Take your time now, Foster," he said, "and get your

thoughts well organized. Make sure you know your path and where it will lead, for, once you receive a grant, your

specialization will be formally recognized and, for better or for worse, it will be yours for the rest of your career."

The advice was trite enough, but triteness has often the merit of truth, and Foster recognized that.)

Foster said, "By education and inclination, Dr. Potterley, I'm a hyperop-tics man with a gravities minor. It's

how I described myself in applying for this position. It may not be my official specialization yet, but it's going to be.

It can't be anything else. As for neutrinics, I never even studied the subject."

"Why not?" demanded Potterley at once.

Foster stared. It was the kind of rude curiosity about another man's professional status that was always

irritating. He said, with the edge of his own politeness just a trifle blunted, "A course in neutrinics wasn't given at

my university."

"Good Lord, where did you go?"

"M.I.T.," said Foster quietly.

"And they don't teach neutrinics?"

"No, they don't." Foster felt himself flush and was moved to a defense.

"It's a highly specialized subject with no great value. Chronoscopy, perhaps, has some value, but it is the only practical

application and that's a dead end."

The historian stared at him earnestly. "Tell me this. Do you know where I can find a neutrinics man?"

"No, I don't," said Foster bluntly.

"Well, then, do you know a school which teaches neutrinics?"

"No, I don't."

Potterley smiled tightly and without humor.

Foster resented that smile, found he detected insult in it and grew sufficiently annoyed to say, "I would like to point out,

sir, that you're stepping out of line."

"What?"

"I'm saying that, as a historian, your interest in any sort of physics, your professional interest, is—" He paused, unable to

bring himself quite to say the word.

"Unethical?"

"That's the word, Dr. Potterley."

"My researches have driven me to it," said Potterley in an intense whisper.

"The Research Commission is the place to go. If they permit—"

"I have gone to them and have received no satisfaction."

"Then obviously you must abandon this." Foster knew he was sounding stuffily virtuous, but he wasn't going to let this

man lure him into an expression of intellectual anarchy. It was too early in his career to take stupid risks.

Apparently, though, the remark had its effect on Potterley. Without any warning, the man exploded into a rapid-fire

verbal storm of irresponsibility.

Scholars, he said, could be free only if they could freely follow their own free-swinging curiosity. Research, he said,

forced into a predesigned pattern by the powers that held the purse strings became slavish and had to stagnate. No man,

he said, had the right to dictate the intellectual interests of another.

Foster listened to all of it with disbelief. None of it was strange to him. He had heard college boys talk so in order to

shock their professors and he had once or twice amused himself in that fashion, too. Anyone who studied the history of

science knew that many men had once thought so.

Yet it seemed strange to Foster, almost against nature, that a modern man of science could advance such nonsense. No

one would advocate running a factory by allowing each individual worker to do whatever pleased him at the moment, or

of running a ship according to the casual and conflicting notions of each individual crewman. It would be taken for

granted that some sort of centralized supervisory agency must exist in each case. Why should direction and order benefit

a factory and a ship but not scientific research?

People might say that the human mind was somehow qualitatively different from a ship or factory but the history

of intellectual endeavor proved the opposite.

When science was young and the intricacies of all or most of the known was within the grasp of an individual

mind, there was no need for direction, perhaps. Blind wandering over the uncharted tracts of ignorance could lead to

wonderful finds by accident.

But as knowledge grew, more and more data had to be absorbed before worthwhile journeys into ignorance

could be organized. Men had to specialize. The researcher needed the resources of a library he himself could not

gather, then of instruments he himself could not afford. More and more, the individual researcher gave way to the

research team and the research institution.

The funds necessary for research grew greater as tools grew more numerous. What college was so small today as

not to require at least one nuclear micro-reactor and at least one three-stage computer?

Centuries before, private individuals could no longer subsidize research. By 1940, only the government, large

industries and large universities or research institutions could properly subsidize basic research.

By 1960, even the largest universities depended entirely upon government grants, while research institutions

could not exist without tax concessions and public subscriptions. By 2000, the industrial combines had become a

branch of the world government and, thereafter, the financing of research and therefore its direction naturally

became centralized under a department of the government.

It all worked itself out naturally and well. Every branch of science was fitted neatly to the needs of the public,

and the various branches of science were co-ordinated decently. The material advance of the last half-century was

argument enough for the fact that science was not falling into stagnation.

Foster tried to say a very little of this and was waved aside impatiently by Potterley who said, "You are parroting

official propaganda. You're sitting in the middle of an example that's squarely against the official view. Can you

believe that?"

"Frankly, no."

"Well, why do you say time viewing is a dead end? Why is neutrinics unimportant? You say it is. You say it

categorically. Yet you've never studied it. You claim complete ignorance of the subject. It's not even given in your

school—"

"Isn't the mere fact that it isn't given proof enough?"

"Oh, I see. It's not given because it's unimportant. And it's unimportant because it's not given. Are you satisfied

with that reasoning?"

Foster felt a growing confusion. "It's in the books."

"That's all. The books say neutrinics is unimportant. Your professors tell

you so because they read it in the books. The books say so because professors write them. Who says it from

personal experience and knowledge? Who does research in it? Do you know of anyone?"

Foster said, "I don't see that we're getting anywhere, Dr. Potterley. I have work to do—"

"One minute. I just want you to try this on. See how it sounds to you. I say the government is actively

suppressing basic research in neutrinics and chronoscopy. They're suppressing application of chronoscopy."

"Oh, no."

"Why not? They could do it. There's your centrally directed research. If they refuse grants for research in

any portion of science, that portion dies. They've killed neutrinics. They can do it and have done it."

"But why?"

"I don't know why. I want you to find out. I'd do it myself if I knew enough. I came to you because you're a

young fellow with a brand-new education. Have your intellectual arteries hardened already? Is there no

curiosity in you? Don't you want to know? Don't you want answers?"

The historian was peering intently into Foster's face. Their noses were only inches apart, and Foster was so

lost that he did not think to draw back.

He should, by rights, have ordered Potterley out. If necessary, he should have thrown Potterley out.

It was not respect for age and position that stopped him. It was certainly not that Potterley's arguments had

convinced him. Rather, it was a small point of college pride.

Why didn't M.I.T. give a course in neutrinics? For that matter, now that he came to think of it, he doubted

that there was a single book on neutrinics in the library. He could never recall having seen one.

He stopped to think about that.

And that was ruin.

Caroline Potterley had once been an attractive woman. There were occasions, such as dinners or university

functions, when, by considerable effort, remnants of the attraction could be salvaged.

On ordinary occasions, she sagged. It was the word she applied to herself in moments of self-abhorrence. She

had grown plumper with the years, but the flaccidity about her was not a matter of fat entirely. It was as though

her muscles had given up and grown limp so that she shuffled when she walked, while her eyes grew baggy and

her cheeks jowly. Even her graying hair seemed tired rather than merely stringy. Its straightness seemed to be

the result of a supine surrender to gravity, nothing else.

Caroline Potterley looked at herself in the mirror and admitted this was one of her bad days. She knew the

reason, too.

It had been the dream of Laurel. The strange one, with Laurel grown up. She had been wretched ever since.

Still, she was sony she had mentioned it to Arnold. He didn't say anything; he never did any more; but it was bad for

him. He was particularly withdrawn for days afterward. It might have been that he was getting ready for that important

conference with the big government official (he kept saying he expected no success), but it might also have been her

dream.

It was better in the old days when he would cry sharply at her, "Let the dead past go, Caroline! Talk won't bring her

back, and dreams won't either."

It had been bad for both of them. Horribly bad. She had been away from home and had lived in guilt ever since. If she

had stayed at home, if she had not gone on an unnecessary shopping expedition, there would have been two of them available.

One would have succeeded in saving Laurel.

Poor Arnold had not managed. Heaven knew he tried. He had nearly died himself. He had come out of the burning

house, staggering in agony, blistered, choking, half-blinded, with the dead Laurel in his arms.

The nightmare of that lived on, never lifting entirely.

Arnold slowly grew a shell about himself afterward. He cultivated a low-voiced mildness through which nothing

broke, no lightning struck. He grew puritanical and even abandoned his minor vices, his cigarettes, his penchant for an

occasional profane exclamation. He obtained his grant for the preparation of a new history of Carthage and subordinated

everything to that.

She tried to help him. She hunted up his references, typed his notes and microfilmed them. Then that ended suddenly.

She ran from the desk suddenly one evening, reaching the bathroom in bare time and retching abominably. Her

husband followed her in confusion and concern.

"Caroline, what's wrong?"

It took a drop of brandy to bring her around. She said, "Is it true? What they did?"

"Who did?"

"The Carthaginians."

He stared at her and she got it out by indirection. She couldn't say it right out.

The Carthaginians, it seemed, worshiped Moloch, in the form of a hollow, brazen idol with a furnace in its belly. At

times of national crisis, the priests and the people gathered, and infants, after the proper ceremonies and invocations,

were dextrously hurled, alive, into the flames.

They were given sweetmeats just before the crucial moment, in order that the efficacy of the sacrifice not be ruined by

displeasing cries of panic. The drums rolled just after the moment, to drown out the few seconds of infant shrieking. The

parents were present, presumably gratified, for the sacrifice was pleasing to the gods. . . .

Arnold Potterley frowned darkly. Vicious lies, he told her, on the part of Carthage's enemies. He should have

warned her. After all, such propa-

gandistic lies were not uncommon. According to the Greeks, the ancient Hebrews worshiped an ass's head in their

Holy of Holies. According to the Romans, the primitive Christians were haters of all men who sacrificed pagan children

in the catacombs.

"Then they didn't do it?" asked Caroline.

"I'm sure they didn't. The primitive Phoenicians may have. Human sacrifice is commonplace in primitive cultures.

But Carthage in her great days was not a primitive culture. Human sacrifice often gives way to symbolic actions such as

circumcision. The Greeks and Romans might have mistaken some Carthaginian symbolism for the original full rite, either

out of ignorance or out of malice."

"Are you sure?"

"I can't be sure yet, Caroline, but when I've got enough evidence, I'll apply for permission to use chronoscopy,

which will settle the matter once and for all."

"Chronoscopy?"

"Time viewing. We can focus on ancient Carthage at some time of crisis, the landing of Scipio Africanus in 202 B.C.,

for instance, and see with our own eyes exactly what happens. And you'll see, I'll be right."

He patted her and smiled encouragingly, but she dreamed of Laurel every night for two weeks thereafter and she never

helped him with his Carthage project again. Nor did he ever ask her to.

But now she was bracing herself for his coming. He had called her after arriving back in town, told her he had seen the

government man and that it had gone as expected. That meant failure, and yet the little telltale sign of depression had

been absent from his voice and his features had appeared quite composed in the teleview. He had another errand to take

care of, he said, before coming home.

It meant he would be late, but that didn't matter. Neither one of them was particular about eating hours or cared

when packages were taken out of the freezer or even which packages or when the selfwarming mechanism was activated.

When he did arrive, he surprised her. There was nothing untoward about him in any obvious way. He kissed her

dutifully and smiled, took off his hat and asked if all had been well while he was gone. It was all almost perfectly normal.

Almost.

She had learned to detect small things, though, and his pace in all this was a trifle hurried. Enough to show her

accustomed eye that he was under tension.

She said, "Has something happened?"

He said, "We're going to have a dinner guest night after next, Caroline. You don't mind?"

"Well, no. Is it anyone I know?"

"No. A young instructor. A newcomer. I've spoken to him." He suddenly

whirled toward her and seized her arms at the elbow, held them a moment, then dropped them in confusion

as though disconcerted at having shown emotion.

He said, "1 almost didn't get through to him. Imagine that. Terrible, terrible, the way we have all bent to the

yoke; the affection we have for the harness about us."

Mrs. Potterley wasn't sure she understood, but for a year she had been watching him grow quietly more

rebellious; little by little more daring in his criticism of the government. She said, "You haven't spoken foolishly to

him, have you?"

"What do you mean, foolishly? He'll be doing some neutrinics for me."

"Neutrinics" was trisyllabic nonsense to Mrs. Potterley, but she knew it had nothing to do with history. She

said faintly, "Arnold, I don't like you to do that. You'll lose your position. It's—"

"It's intellectual anarchy, my dear," he said. "That's the phrase you want. Very well. I am an anarchist. If the

government will not allow me to push my researches, I will push them on my own. And when I show the way,

others will follow. . . . And if they don't, it makes no difference. It's Carthage that counts and human

knowledge, not you and I."

"But you don't know this young man. What if he is an agent for the Commission of Research."

"Not likely and I'll take that chance." He made a fist of his right hand and rubbed it gently against the palm

of his left. "He's on my side now. I'm sure of it. He can't help but be. I can recognize intellectual curiosity when I

see it in a man's eyes and face and attitude, and it's a fatal disease for a tame scientist. Even today it takes time to

beat it out of a man and the young ones are vulnerable. . . . Oh, why stop at anything? Why not build our own

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ContentsFOUNDATION,DOUBLEDAY,andtheportrayaloftheletterFaretrademarksofDoubleday,adivisionofBantamDoubledayDellPublishingGroup,Inc.Allofthecharactersinthisbookarefictitious,andanyresemblancetoactualpersons,livingordead,ispurelycoincidental.Thisvolumecontainsthecompletecontentsoftheprevioush/publishe...

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Asimov, Isaac - The Complete Stories - Volume 1

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