Asimov, Isaac - Gods Themselves, The

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THE GODS THEMSELVES

e-book ver. 1.0

DEDICATION

To Mankind

And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after all

NOTE

The story starts with section 6. This is not a mistake. I have my own subtle reasoning. So just read and, I hope, enjoy.

Against stupidity . . .

"No good!" said Lamont, sharply. "I didn't get anywhere." He had a brooding look about him that went with his deep-s

eyes and the slight asymmetry of his long chin. There was a brooding look about him at the best of times, and this was n

the best of times. His second formal interview with Hallam had been a greater fiasco than the first.

"Don't be dramatic," said Myron Bronowski, placidly. "You didn't expect to. You told me that." He was tossing peanu

into the air and catching them in his plump-lipped mouth as they came down. He never missed. He was not very tall, no

very thin.

"That doesn't make it pleasant. But you're right, it doesn't matter. There are other things I can do and intend to do and

besides that, I depend on you. If you could only find out—"

"Don't finish, Pete. I've heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence."

"A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood.

"That may be," sighed Bronowski, "but they're trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I

sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences ca

communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all.

"It does," said Lamont savagely, his hands clearly balling into fists within his lab coat pockets. "It means Hallam and

It means that fool-hero, Dr. Frederick Hallam and me. We're different intelligences because when I talk to him he doesn

understand. His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but I lac

the proof of any other state from which it might stop."

Bronowski murmured, "What a way to speak of the Father of the Electron Pump."

"That's it. Reputed Father of the Electron Pump. A bastard birth, if ever there was one. His contribution was least in

substance. I know."

"I know, too. You've told me often," and Bronowski tossed another peanut into the air. He didn't miss.

It had happened thirty years before, Frederick Hallam was a radiochemist, with the print on his doctoral dissertation sti

wet and with no sign whatever of being a world-shaker.

What began the shaking of the world was the fact that a dusty reagent bottle marked "Tungsten Metal" stood on his des

It wasn't his; he had never used it. It was a legacy from some dim day when some past inhabitant of the office had wante

tungsten for some long-forgotten reason. It wasn't even really tungsten any more. It consisted of small pellets of what w

now heavily layered with oxide —gray and dusty. No use to anyone.

And one day Hallam entered the laboratory (well, it was October 3, 2070, to be exact), got to work, stopped shortly

before 10 A.M., stared transfixed at the bottle, and lifted it. It was as dusty as ever, the label as faded, but he called out,

"God damn it; who the hell has been tampering with this?"

That, at least, was the account of Denison, who overheard the remark and who told it to Lamont a generation later.

The official tale of the discovery, as reported in the books, leaves out the phraseology. One gets the impression of

keen-eyed chemist, aware of change and instantly drawing deep-seated deductions.

ot so. Hallam had no use for the tungsten; it was of no earthly value to him and any tampering with it could be

no possible importance to him. However, he hated any interference with his desk (as so many do) and he suspecte

others of possessing keen desires to engage in such interference out of sheer malice.

No one at the time admitted to knowing anything about the matter. Benjamin Allan Denison, who overheard the

initial remark, had an office immediately across the corridor and both doors were open. He looked up and met

Hallam's accusatory eye.

He didn't particularly like Hallam (no one particularly did) and he had slept badly the night before. He was, as it

happened and as he later recalled, rather pleased to have someone on whom to vent his spleen, and Hallam made th

perfect candidate.

When Hallam held the bottle up to his face, Denison pulled back with clear distaste. "Why the devil should I be

interested in your tungsten?" he demanded. "Why should anyone? If you'll look at the bottle, you'll see that the thin

hasn't been opened for twenty years; and if you hadn't put your own grubby paws on it, you would have seen no on

had touched it"

Hallam flushed a slow, angry red. He said, tightly, "Listen, Denison, someone has changed the contents. That's n

the tungsten."

Denison allowed himself a small, but distinct sniff. "How would you know?"

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

It would have been an unfortunate remark in any case. Denison's scholastic record, as fresh as Hallam's, was far

more impressive and he was the bright-young-man of the department. Hallam knew this and, what was worse,

Denison knew it too, and made no secret of it Denison's "How would you know?" with the clear and unmistakable

emphasis on the "you," was ample motivation for all that followed. Without it, Hallam would never have become th

greatest and most revered scientist in history, to use the exact phrase Denison later used in his interview with Lamen

Officially, Hallam had come in on that fateful morning, noticed the dusty gray pellets gone—not even the dust o

the inside surface remaining—and clear iron-gray metal in their place. Naturally, he investigated—

But place the official version to, one side. It was Denison. Had he confined himself to a simple negative, or a shru

the chances are that Hallam would have asked others, then eventually weariest of the unexplained event, put the

bottle to one side, and let subsequent tragedy, whether subtle or drastic (depending on how long the ultimate

discovery was delayed), guide the future. In any event, it would not have been Hallam who rode the whirlwind to th

heights.

With the "How would you know?" cutting him down, however, Hallam could only retort wildly, "I'll show you th

I know."

And after that, nothing could prevent him from going to extremes. The analysis of the metal in the old container

became his number-one priority, and his prime goal was to wipe the haughtiness from Denison's thin-nosed face an

the perpetual trace of a sneer from his pale lips.

Denison never forgot that moment for it was his own remark that drove Hallam to the Nobel Price and himself t

oblivion.

He had no way of knowing (or if he knew he would not then have cared) that there was an overwhelming

stubbornness in Hallam, the mediocrity's frightened need to safeguard his pride, that would carry the day at that tim

more than all Denison's native brilliance would have.

Hallam moved at once and directly. He carried his metal to the mass spectrography department. As a radiation

chemist it was a natural move. He knew the technicians there, he had worked with them, and he was forceful. He was

forceful to such an effect, indeed, that the job was placed ahead of projects of much greater pith and moment.

The mass spectrographer said eventually, "Well, it isn't tungsten."

Hallam's broad and humorless face wrinkled into a harsh smile. "All right. Well tell that to Bright-

oy Denison. I want

report and—"

"But wait awhile, Dr. Hallam. I'm telling you it's not tungsten, but that doesn't mean I know what it is."

"What do you mean you don't know what it is."

"I mean the results are ridiculous." The technician thought a while. "Impossible, actually. The charge-mass ratio is all

wrong."

"All wrong in what way?"

"Too high. It just can't be."

"Well, then," said Hallam and, regardless of the motive that was driving him, his next remark set him on the road to th

Nobel Prize and, it might even be argued, a deserved one, "get the frequency of its characteristic x-radiation and figure o

the charge. Don't just sit around and talk about something being impossible."

It was a troubled technician who came into Hallam's office a few days later.

Hallam ignored the trouble on the other's face—he was never sensitive—and said, "Did you find—" He then cast a

troubled look of his own at Denison, sitting at the desk in his own lab and shut the door. "Did you find the nuclear charge?

"Yes, but it's wrong."

"All right, Tracy. Do it over."

"I did it over a dozen times. It's wrong."

"If you made the measurement, that's it; Don't argue with the facts."

Tracy rubbed his ear and said, "I've got to, Doc. If I take the measurements seriously, then what you've given me is

plutonium-186."

"Plutonium-186? Plutonium-186?"

"The charge is +94. The mass is 186."

"But that's impossible. There's no such isotope. There can't be."

"That's what I'm saying to you. But those are the measurements."

"But a situation like that leaves the nucleus over fifty neutrons short. You can't have plutonium-186. You couldn't

squeeze ninety-four protons into one nucleus with only ninety-two neutrons and expect it to hang together for even a

trillion-trillionth of a second."

"That's what I'm telling you, Doc," said Tracy, patiently.

And then Hallam stopped to think. It was tungsten he was missing and one of its isotopes, tungsten-186, was stable.

Tungsten-186 had 74 protons and 112 neutrons in its nucleus. Could something have turned twenty neutrons into twent

protons? Surely that was impossible.

"Are there any signs of radioactivity?" asked Hallam, groping somehow for a road out of the maze.

"I thought of that," said the technician. "It's stable. Absolutely stable."

"Then it can't be plutonium-186."

"I keep telling you, Doc."

Hallam said, hopelessly, "Well, give me the stuff." Alone once more, he sat and looked at the bottle in stupefaction. Th

most nearly stable isotope of plutonium was plutonium-240, where 146 neutrons were needed to make the 94 protons stic

together with some semblance of partial stability.

What could he do now? It was beyond him and he was. sorry he had started. After all, he had real work begging to be

done, and this thing—this mystery—had nothing to do with him. Tracy had made some stupid mistake or the mass

spectrometer was out of whack, or— Well, what of it? Forget the whole thing! Except that Hallam couldn't do that. Soon

or later, Denison would be bound to stop by and, with that irritating half-smile of his, ask after the tungsten. Then what

could Hallam say? Could he say, "It isn't tungsten, just as I told you"

Surely Denison would ask, "Oh, and what is it, then?" and nothing imaginable could have made Hallam expose himse

to the kind of derision that would follow any claim that it was plutonium-186. He had to find out what it was, and he had t

do it himself. Clearly, he couldn't trust anyone.

So about two weeks later he entered Tracy's laboratory in what can fairly be described as a first-class fury.

"Hey, didn't you tell me that stuff was non-radioactive?"

"What stuff?" said Tracy automatically, before he remembered.

"That stuff you called plutonium-186," said Hallam.

"Oh. Well it was stable."

"About as stable as your mental state. If you call this non-radioactive, you belong in a plumber's shop."

Tracy frowned. "Okay, Doc. Pass it over and let's try." And then he said, "Beats me! It is radioactive. Not much, but it i

I don't see how I could have missed that."

"And how far can I trust your crap about plutonium-186?"

The matter had Hallam by the throat now. The mystery had become so exasperating as to be a personal affront Whoev

had switched bottles, or switched contents, must either have switched again or have devised a metal for the specific

purpose of making a fool of him. In either case, he was ready to pull the world apart to solve the matter if he had to—an

if he could.

He had his stubbornness, and an intensity that could not easily be brushed aside, and he went straight to G. C.

Kantrowitsch, who was then in the final year of his own rather remarkable career. Kantrowitsch's aid was difficult to enli

but, once enlisted, it quickly caught fire.

Two days later, in fact, he was storming into Hallam's office in a blaze of excitement. "Have you been handling this

thing with your hands?"

"Not much," said Hallam.

"Well, don't If you've got any mere, don't. It's emitting positrons."

"Oh?"

"The most energetic positrons I've ever seen. . . . And your figures on its radioactivity are too low."

"Too low?"

"Distinctly. And what bothers me is that every measurement I take is just a trifle higher than the one before."

6 (continued)

Bronowski came across an apple in the capacious pocket of his jacket and bit into it. "Okay, you've seen Hallam and

been kicked out as expected. What next?"

"I haven't quite decided. But whatever it is, it's going to dump him on his fat behind. I saw him once before, you kno

years ago, when I first came here; when I thought he was a great man. A great man— He's the greatest villain in the histor

of science. He's rewritten the history of the Pump, you know, rewritten it here—" Lamont tapped his temple. "He believ

his own fantasy and fights for it with a diseased fury. He's a pygmy with only one talent, the ability to convince others he

a giant."

Lamont looked up at Bronowski's wide and placid face, wreathed now in amusement, and forced a laugh. "Oh, well, th

doesn't do any good, and I've told it all to you before anyway."

"Many times," agreed Bronowski.

"But it just gravels me to have the whole world—"

Peter Lament had been two years old when Hallam had picked up his altered tungsten for the first time. When he was

twenty-five, he joined Pump Station One with the print on his own doctoral dissertation still fresh and accepted a

simultaneous appointment on the Physics faculty of the university.

It was a remarkably satisfactory achievement for the young man. Pump Station One was lacking in the glisten of the lat

stations but it was the granddaddy of them all, of the entire chain that girdled the planet now even though the entire

technology was only a couple of decades old. No major technological advance had ever caught hold so rapidly and so

entirely and why not? It meant free energy without limit and without problems. It was the Santa Claus and the Aladdin'

lamp of the whole world.

Lament had taken the job in order to deal with problems of the highest theoretical abstraction and yet he found himse

interested in the amazing story of the development of the Electron Pump. It had never been written up in its entirety by

someone who truly understood the theoretical principles (in so far as they could be understood) and who had some a

ilit

in translating the complexities for the general public. To be sure, Hallam himself had written a number of articles for th

popular media, but these did not represent a connected, reasoned history —something Lament yearned to supply.

He used Hallam's articles to begin with, other reminiscences in published form—-the official documents so to

speak—carrying them through to Hallam's world-shaking remark, the Great Insight, as it was often called (invariably wit

capital letters).

Afterward, of course, when Lament had experienced his disillusionment, he began digging deeper, and the question

arose in his mind as to whether Hallam's great remark had really been Hallam's. It had been advanced at the seminar whic

marked the true beginning of the Electron Pump and yet, as it turned out, it was extraordinarily difficult to get the details

that seminar and quite impossible to get the voice recordings.

Eventually, Lamont began to suspect that the dimness of the footprints left on the sands of time by that seminar was n

entirely accidental. Putting several items ingeniously together, it began to seem that there was a reasonable chance that

John F. X. McFarland had said something very nearly like the crucial statement Hallam had made—and had done so

before Hallam.

He went to see McFarland, who was featured not at all in the official accounts, and who was now doing

upper-atmosphere research, with particular reference to the Solar wind. It was not a top-echelon job, but it had its

perquisites, and it had more than a little to do with Pump effects. McFarland had clearly avoided suffering the fate of

oblivion that had overtaken Denison.

He was polite enough to Lament and willing to. talk on any subject except the events of that seminar. That he simply

didn't remember.

Lamont insisted, quoted the evidence he had gathered.

McFarland took out a pipe, filled it, inspected its contents thoroughly, and said, with a queer intentness. "I don't choos

to remember, because it doesn't matter; it really doesn't. Suppose I laid claim to having said something. No one would

believe it. I would look like an idiot and a megalomaniac one."

"And Hallam would see to it that you were retired?"

"I'm not saying that, but I don't see that it would do me any good. What's the difference, anyway?"

"A matter of historical truth!" said Lamont

"Oh, bull. The historical truth is that Hallam never let go. He drove everyone into investigating, whether they wanted t

or not. Without him, that tungsten would eventually have exploded with I don't know how many casualties. There migh

never have been another sample, and we might never have had the Pump. Hallam deserves the credit for it, even if he

doesn't deserve the credit, and if that doesn't make sense, I can't help it, because history doesn't make sense."

Lament wasn't satisfied with that, but he had to make it do, for McFarland would simply say no more.

Historical truth!

One piece of historical truth that seemed beyond question was that it was the radioactivity that pulled "Hallam's

tungsten" (this is what it was called as a matter of historical custom) into the big time. It didn't matter whether it was or w

not tungsten; whether it had or had not been tampered with; even whether it was or was not an impossible isotope.

Everything was swallowed up in the amazement of something, anything, which showed a constantly increasing intensit

of radioactivity under circumstances that ruled out the existence of any type of radioactive breakdown, in any number o

steps, then known.

After a while, Kantrowitsch muttered, "We'd better spread it out. If we keep it in sizable lumps it will vaporize or

explode or both and contaminate half the city."

So it was powdered and scattered, and mixed with ordinary tungsten at first and then, when the tungsten grew

radioactive in its turn, it was mixed with graphite, which had a lower cross-section to the radiation.

Less than two months after Hallam had noticed the change in the bottle's contents, Kantrowitsch, in a communication t

the editor of Nuclear Reviews, with Hallam's name appended as co-author, announced the existence of plutonium-186.

Tracy's original determination was thus vindicated but his name was not mentioned, either then or later. With that Hallam

tungsten began to take on an epic scale and Denison began to note the changes that ended by making him a non-person.

The existence of plutonium-186 was bad enough. To have been stable at the start and to display a curiously increasin

radioactivity was much worse.

A seminar to handle the problem was organized. Kantrowitsch was in the chair, which was an interesting historical not

for it was the last time in the history of the Electron Pump that a major meeting was held in connection with it that was

chaired by anyone but Hallam. As a matter of fact, Kantrowitsch died five months later and the only personality with

sufficient prestige to keep Hallam in the shade was removed.

The meeting was extraordinarily fruitless until Hallam announced his Great Insight, but in the version as reconstructe

by Lamont, the real turning point came during the luncheon break. At that time, McFarland, who is not credited with an

remarks in the official records, although he was listed as an attendee, said "You know, what we need is a little bit of

fantasy here. Suppose—"

He was speaking to Diderick van Klemens, and Van Klemens reported it sketchily in a kind of personal shorthand in h

own notes. Long before Lamont had succeeded in tracking that down, Van Klemens was dead, and though his notes

convinced Lamont himself, he had to admit they would not make a convincing story without further corroboration. What

more, there was no way of proving that Hallam had overheard the remark. Lamont would have been willing to bet a

fortune that Hallam was within earshot, but that willingness was not satisfactory proof either.

And then, suppose Lamont could prove it. It might hurt Hallam's egregious pride, but it couldn't really shake his positio

It would be argued that to McFarland, the remark was only fantasy. It was Hallam who accepted it as something more.

was Hallam who was willing to stand up in front of the group and say it officially and risk the derision that might be hi

McFarland would surely never have dreamed of placing himself on official record with his "little bit of fantasy."

Lamont might have counter-argued that McFarland was a well-known nuclear physicist with a reputation to lose, whil

Hallam was a young radiochemist who could say anything he pleased in nuclear physics and, as an outsider, get away wit

it.

In any case, this is what Hallam said, according to the official transcript:

"Gentlemen, we are getting nowhere. I am therefore going to make a suggestion, not because it necessarily makes sens

but because it represents less nonsense than anything else I've heard. . . . We are faced with a substance, plutonium-186

that cannot exist at all, let alone as an even momentarily stable substance, if the natural laws of the Universe have any

validity at all. It follows, then, that since it does indubitably exist and did exist as a stable substance to begin with, it mu

have existed, at least to begin with, in a place or at a time or under circumstances where the natural laws of the Univers

were other than they are. To put it bluntly, the substance we are studying did not originate in our Universe at all, but in

another—an alternate Universe—a parallel Universe. Call it what you want.

"Once here—and I don't pretend to know how it got across—it was stable still and I suggest that this was because it

carried the laws of its own Universe with it. The fact that it slowly became radioactive and? then ever more radioactive

may mean that the laws of our own Universe slowly soaked into its substance, if you know what I mean.

"I point out that at the same time that the plutonium-186 appeared, a sample of tungsten, made up of several stable

isotopes, including tungsten-186, disappeared. It may have slipped over into the parallel Universe. After all, it is logical t

suppose that it is simpler for an exchange of mass to take place than for a one-way transfer to do so. In the parallel

Universe, tungsten-186 may be as anomalous as plutonium-186 is here. It may begin as a stable substance and slowly

become increasingly radioactive. It may serve as an energy source there just as plutonium-186 would here."

The audience must have been listening with considerable astonishment for there is no record of interruption, at least

until the sentence last recorded above, at which time Hallam seemed to have paused to catch his breath and perhaps to

wonder at his own temerity.

Someone from the audience (presumably Antoine-Jerome Lapin, though the record is not clear) asked if Professor

Hallam were suggesting that an intelligent agent in the para-Universe had deliberately made the exchange in order to

obtain an energy source. The expression "para-Universe," inspired apparently as an abbreviation of "parallel-Universe,"

thus entered the language. This question contained the first recorded use of the expression.

There was a pause and then Hallam, more daring than ever, said—and this was the nub of the Great Insight— "Yes, I

think so, and I think that the energy source cannot be made practical unless Universe and para-Universe work together,

each at one half of a pump, pushing energy from them to us and from us to them, taking advantage of the difference in t

natural laws of the two Universes."

Hallam had adopted the word "para-Universe" and made it his own at this point. Furthermore, he became the first to us

the word "pump" (since invariably capitalized) in connection with the matter.

There is a tendency in the official account to give the impression that Hallam's suggestion caught fire at once, but it di

not. Those who were willing to discuss it at all would commit themselves no farther than to say it was an amusing

speculation. Kantrowitsch, in particular, did not say a word. This was crucial to Hallam's career.

Hallam could scarcely carry through the theoretical and practical implications of his own suggestion all by himself,

team was required and it was built up. But none of the team, until it was too late, would associate himself openly with t

suggestion. By the time success was unmistakable, the public had grown to think of it as Hallam's and Hallam's alone. I

was Hallam, to all the world, and Hallam alone, who had first discovered the substance, who had conceived and

transmitted the Great Insight; and it was therefore Hallam who was the Father of the Electron Pump.

Thus, in various laboratories, pellets of tungsten metal were laid out temptingly. In one out of ten the transfer was ma

and new supplies of plutonium-186 were produced. Other elements were offered as bait and refused. . . . But wherever th

plutonium-186 appeared and whoever it was that brought the supply to the central research organization working on the

problem, to the public it was an additional quantity of "Hallam's-tungsten."

It was Hallam again who presented some aspects of the theory to the public most successfully. To his own surpris

(as he later said) he found himself to be a facile writer, and he enjoyed popularizing. Besides success has its own

inertia, and the public would accept information on the project from no one but Hallam.

In a since famous article in the North American Sunday Tele-Times Weekly, he wrote, "We cannot say in how man

different ways the laws of the para-Universe differ from our own, but we can guess with some assurance that the

strong nuclear interaction, which is the strongest known force in our Universe, is even stronger in the para-Univers

perhaps a hundred times stronger. This means that protons are more easily held together against their own

electrostatic attraction and that a nucleus requires fewer neutrons to produce stability.

"Plutonium-186, stable in their Universe, contains far too many protons, or too few neutrons, to be stable in ours

with its less effective nuclear interaction. The plutonium-186, once in our Universe, begins to radiate positrons,

releasing energy as it does so, and with each positron emitted, a proton within a nucleus is converted to a neutron.

Eventually, twenty protons per nucleus have been converted to neutrons and plutonium-186 has become

tungsten-186, which is stable by the laws of our own Universe. In the process, twenty positrons per nucleus have

been eliminated. These meet, combine with, and annihilate twenty electrons, releasing further energy, so that for

every plutonium-186 nucleus sent to us, our Universe ends up with twenty fewer electrons.

"Meanwhile, the tungsten-186 that enters the para-Universe is unstable there for the opposite reason. By the law

of the para-Universe it has too many neutrons, or too few protons. The tungsten-186 nuclei begin to emit electrons

releasing energy steadily while doing so, and with each emitted electron a neutron changes to a proton until, in the

end, it is plutonium-186 again. With each tungsten-186 nucleus sent into the para-Universe, twenty more electrons

are added to it.

"The plutonium/tungsten can make its cycle endlessly back and forth between Universe and para-Universe, yieldin

energy first in one and then in another, with the net effect being a transfer of twenty electrons from our Universe to thei

per each nucleus cycled. Both sides can gain energy from what is, in effect, an Inter-Universe Electron Pump."

The conversion of this notion into reality and the actual establishment of the Electron Pump as an effective energy

source proceeded with amazing speed, and every stage of its success enhanced Hallam's prestige.

Lament had no reason to doubt the basis of that prestige and it was with a certain hero-worshipfulness (the memory o

which embarrassed him later and which he strove—with some success—to eliminate from his mind) that he first applie

for a chance to interview Hallam at some length in connection with the history he was planning.

Hallam seemed amenable. In thirty years, his position in public esteem had become so lofty one might wonder why h

nose did not bleed. Physically, he had aged impressively, if not gracefully. There was a ponderousness to his body that

gave him the appearance of circumstantial weightiness and if his face were gross in its features he seemed able to give

them the air of a kind of intellectual repose. He still reddened quickly and the easily bruised nature of his self-esteem w

a byword.

Hallam had undergone some quick briefing before Lamont's entrance. He said, "You are Dr. Peter Lamont and you'v

done good work, I'm told, on para-theory. I recall your paper. On para-fusion, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, refresh my memory. Tell me about it. Informally, of course, as though you were talking to a layman. After all,

and he chuckled here, "in a way, I am a layman. I'm just a radiochemist, you know; and no great theoretician, unless yo

want to count a few concepts now and then."

Lament accepted this, at the time, as a straightforward statement, and, indeed, the speech may not have been as

obscenely condescending as he later insisted on remembering it to have been. It was typical, though, as Lament later foun

out, or at least maintained, of Hallam's method of grasping the essentials of the work done by others. He could talk briskl

about the subject thereafter without being overparticular, or particular at all, in assigning credit.

But the younger Lament of the time was rather flattered, and he began at once with that voluble eagerness one

experiences in explaining one's own discoveries. "I can't say I did much, Dr. Hallam. Deducing the laws of nature of th

para-Universe—the para-laws—is a tricky business. We have so little to go on. I started from what little we know and

assumed no new departures that we had no evidence for. With a stronger nuclear interaction, it seems obvious that the

fusion of small nuclei would take place more readily."

"Para-fusion," said Hallam.

"Yes, sir. The trick was simply to work out what the details might be. The mathematics involved was somewhat subtl

but once a few transformations were made, the difficulties tended to melt away. It turns out, for instance, that lithium

hydride can be made to undergo catastrophic fusion at temperatures four orders of magnitude lower there than here. It

takes fission-

omb temperatures to explode lithium hydride here, but a mere dyamite charge, so to speak, would turn th

trick in the para-Universe. Just possibly lithium hydride in the para-Universe could be ignited with a match, but that's n

very likely. We've offered them lithium hydride, you know, since fusion power might be natural for them, but they won

touch it"

"Yes, I know that."

"It would clearly be too risky for them; like using nitroglycerine in ton-lots in rocket engines—only worse."

"Very good. And you are also writing a history of the Pump."

"An informal one, sir. When the manuscript is ready I will ask you to read it, if I may, so that I might have the benefit

your intimate knowledge of events. In fact, I would like to take advantage of some of that knowledge right now if you hav

a little time."

"I can make some. What is it you want to know?" Hal-lam was smiling. It was the last time he ever smiled in Lament'

presence.

"The development of an effective and practical Pump, Professor Hallam, took place with extraordinary speed," began

Lamont "Once the Pump Project—"

"The Inter-Universe Electron Pump Project," corrected Hallam, still smiling.

"Yes, of course," said Lamont, clearing his throat. "I was merely using the popular name. Once the project started, th

engineering details were developed with great rapidity and with little waste motion."

"That is true," said Hallam, with a touch of complacence. "People have tried to tell me that the credit was mine for

vigorous and imaginative direction, but I wouldn't care to have you overstress that in your book. The fact is that we had a

enormous fund of talent in the project, and I wouldn't want the brilliance of individual members to be dimmed by any

exaggeration of my role."

Lamont shook his head with a little annoyance. He found the remark irrelevant. He said, "I don't mean that at all. I mea

the intelligence at the other end—the para-men, to use the popular phrase. They started it. We discovered them after the

first transfer of plutonium for tungsten; but they discovered us first in order to make the transfer, working on pure theor

without the benefit of the hint they . gave us. And there's the iron-foil they sent across—"

Hallam's smile had now disappeared, and permanently. He was frowning and he said loudly, "The symbols were nev

understood. Nothing about them—"

"The geometric figures were understood, sir. I've looked into it and it's quite clear that they were directing the geometr

of the Pump. It seems to me that—"

Hallam's chair shoved back with an angry scrape. He said, "Let's not have any of that, young man. We did the work, n

they."

"Yes—but isn't it true that they—"

"That they what?"

Lamont became aware now of the storm of emotion he had raised, but he couldn't understand its cause. Uncertainly, h

said, "That they are more intelligent than we— that they did the real work. Is there any doubt of that, sir?"

Hallam, red-faced, had heaved himself to his feet "There is every doubt," he shouted."! will not have mysticism here.

There is too much of that. See here, young man," he advanced on the still seated and thoroughly astonished Lamont an

shook a thick finger at him, "if your history is going to take the attitude that we were puppets in the hands of the para-me

it will not be published from this institution; or at all, if I have my way. I will not have mankind and its intelligence

downgraded and I won't have para-men cast in the role of gods."

Lamont could only leave, a puzzled man, utterly upset at having created harsh feeling where he had wanted only to ha

good will.

And then he found that his historical sources were suddenly drying up. Those who had been loquacious enough a wee

earlier now remembered nothing and had no time for further interviews.

Lamont was irritated at first and then a slow anger began to build within him. He looked at what he had from a new

viewpoint, and now he began to squeeze and insist where earlier he had merely asked. When he met Hallam at departme

functions, Hallam frowned and looked through him and Lamont began to look scornful in his turn.

The net result was that Lamont found his prime career as para-theoretician

eginning to abort and turned more firmly

than ever toward his secondary career as science-historian.

6 (continued)

"That damned fool," muttered Lament, reminiscently. "You had to be there, Mike, to see him go into panic at any

suggestion that it was the other side that was the moving force. I look back on it and I wonder—how was it possible to

meet him, however casually, and not know he would react that way. Just be grateful you never had to work with him."

"I am," said Bronowski, indifferently, "though there are times you're no angel."

"Don't complain. With your sort of work you have no problems."

"Also no interest. Who cares about my sort of work except myself and five others in the world. Maybe six others —if

you remember."

Lamont remembered. "Oh, well," he said.

Bronowski's placid exterior never fooled anyone who grew to know him even moderately well. He was sharp and he

worried a problem till he had the solution or till he had it in such tatters that he knew no solution was possible.

Consider the Etruscan inscriptions on which he had built his reputation. The language had been a living one till the fir

century A.D., but the cultural imperialism of the Romans had left nothing behind and it had vanished almost completely

What inscriptions survived the carnage of Roman hostility and—worse—indifference were written in Greek letters so th

they could be pronounced, but nothing more. Etruscan seemed to have no relationship to any of the surrounding

languages; it seemed very archaic; it seemed not even to be Indo-European.

Bronowski therefore passed on to another language that seemed to have no relationship to any of the surrounding

languages; that seemed very archaic; that seemed not even to be Indo-European—but which was very much alive and

which was spoken in a region not so very far from where once the Etruscans had lived.

What of the Basque language? Bronowski wondered. And he used Basque as his guide. Others had tried this before hi

and given up. Bronowski did not.

It was hard work, for Basque, an extraordinarily difficult language in itself, was only the loosest of helps. Bronowski

found more and more reason, as he went on, to suspect some cultural connection between the inhabitants of early norther

Italy and early northern Spain. He could even make out a strong case for a broad swatch of pre-Celts filling western

Europe with a language of which Etruscan and Basque were dimly-related survivors. In two thousand years, however,

Basque had evolved and had become more than a little contaminated with Spanish. To try, first, to reason out its structu

in Roman times and then relate it to Etruscan was an intellectual feat of surpassing difficulty and Bronowski utterly

astonished the world's philologists when he triumphed.

The Etruscan translations themselves were marvels of dullness and had no significance whatever; routine funerary

inscriptions for the most part. The fact of the translation, however, was stunning and, as it turned out, it proved of the

greatest importance to Lamont.

—Not at first. To be perfectly truthful about it, the translations had been a fact for nearly five years before Lamont had

much as heard that there were such people, once, as the Etruscans. But then Bronowski came to the university to give o

of the annual Fellowship Lectures and Lament, who usually shirked the duty of attending which fell on the faculty

members, did not shirk this one.

It was not because he recognized its importance or felt any interest in it whatever. It was because he was dating a

graduate student in the Department of Romance Languages and it was either that or a music festival he particularly wante

to avoid hearing. The social connection was a feeble one, scarcely satisfactory from Lament's point of view and only

temporary, but it did get him to the talk.

He rather enjoyed it, as it happened. The dim Etruscan civilization entered his consciousness for the first time as a matt

of distant interest, and the problem of solving an undeciphered language struck him as fascinating. When young, he ha

enjoyed solving cryptograms, but had put them away with other childish things in favor of the much grander cryptogra

posed by nature, so that he ended in para-theory.

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THEGODSTHEMSELVESCopyright©1972byIsaacAsimov.e-bookver.1.0DEDICATIONToMankindAndthehopethatthewaragainstfollymaysomedaybewon,afterallNOTEThestorystartswithsection6.Thisisnotamistake.Ihavemyownsubtlereasoning.Sojustreadand,Ihope,enjoy.1Againststupidity...6"Nogood!"saidLamont,sharply."Ididn'tgetanywhe...

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