Still, George wanted the work continued, to learn how much time was left, and who was responsible. Alex had wrung one promise from George, in case they ever did find the culprit. He wanted an hour with the fellow… one hour to talk physics before George wreaked vengeance on the negligent genius with his own hands.
Thinking about the poor man he had encountered so roughly back in Rotorua — remembering the sad yet bloody look in the mucker’s eyes — Alex wondered if any of them really had a right to judge.
He had always liked to think he had a passing education in fields outside his own. Alex had known, for instance, that even the greatest mountains and canyons were mere ripples and pores on the planet’s huge bulk. Earth’s crust — its basalts and granites and sedimentary rocks — made up only a hundredth of its volume and half a percent of its total mass. But he used to picture a vast interior of superdense, superhot melt, and left it at that. So much for geology.
Only when you truly study a subject do you find out how little you knew all along.
Why, just two months ago Alex had never heard of Andrija Mohoroviĉić!
In 1909 the Yugoslav scientist had used instruments to analyze vibration waves from a Croatian earthquake. Comparing results from several stations, Mohoroviĉić discovered he could, like bats or whales, detect objects by their reflected sound alone. On another occasion he found a thin layer that would later bear his name. But in 1909 what he heard were echoes of the Earth’s very core.
As instruments improved, seismic echolocation showed other abrupt boundaries, along with fault lines, oil fields, and mineral deposits. By century’s end, millions were being spent on high-tech listening as desperate multinationals sought ever-deeper veins, to keep the glory days going just a little longer.
A picture took shape, of a dynamic world in ceaseless change. And while most geologists went on studying the outer crust, some curious men and women cast their nets much deeper, beyond and below any conceivable economic reward.
Such “useless” knowledge often makes men rich — witness George Hutton’s billions. Whereas Alex’s own “practical” project, financed by money-hungry generals, had turned unprofitable to a rare and spectacular degree.
It just goes to show … he thought. You never can tell what surprises life has in store for you.
Even as Alex admitted his ignorance of geophysics, it was his own expertise that Hutton’s techs called upon as they struggled to improve their tools. The gravity antennas employed superconducting wave generators like those in a cavitron — the still-unlicensed machine he’d used in Iquitos. So he was able to suggest shortcuts saving months of development.
It was fun exchanging ideas with others… building something new and exciting, out of sight of the suspicious bureaucrats of the scientific tribunals. Unfortunately, each time they laughed together, or they celebrated overcoming some obstacle, someone inevitably stopped short and turned away, remembering what it was all about and how futile their work was likely to be in the long run. Alex doubted that even his great-grandparents’ generation, during the awful nuclear brinksmanship of the cold war, had ever felt so helpless or hopeless.
But we have to keep trying.
He switched on the radio, looking for some distracting music. But the first station he found carried only news bulletins, in Simplified English.
“We now tell you more news about the tragedy of Reagan Station. Two weeks ago, the American space station exploded. The ambassador to the United Nations, from Russia, accuses that the United States of North America was testing weapons on Reagan Station. The Russian ambassador does say that he has no proof. But he also does say that this is the most likely explanation…”
Most likely explanation indeed, Alex thought. It just goes to show… you never can tell.
□ In olden times, to be “sane” meant you behaved in ways both sanctioned by and normal to the society you lived in.
In the last century some people — especially creative people — rebelled against this imposition, this having to be “average.” Eager to preserve their differences, some even went to the opposite extreme, embracing a romantic notion that creativity and suffering are inseparable, that a thinker or doer must be outrageous, even crazy, in order to be great. Like so many other myths about the human mind, this one lingered for a long time, doing great harm.
At last, however, we have begun to see that true sanity has nothing at all to do with norms or averages. This redefinition emerged only when some got around to asking the simplest of questions.
“What are the most common traits of nearly all forms of mental illness?”
The answer? Nearly all sufferers lack—
flexibility — to be able to change your opinion or course of action, if shown clear evidence you were wrong.
satiability — the ability to feel satisfaction if you actually get what you said you wanted, and to transfer your strivings to other goals.
extrapolation — an ability to realistically assess the possible consequences of your actions and to empathize, or guess how another person might think or feel.
This answer crosses all boundaries of culture, age, and language. When a person is adaptable and satiable, capable of realistic planning and empathizing with his fellow beings, those problems that remain turn out to be mostly physiochemical or behavioral. What is more, this definition allows a broad range of deviations from the norm — the very sorts of eccentricities suppressed under older worldviews.
So far so good. This is, indeed, an improvement.
But where, I must ask, does ambition fit under this sweeping categorization? When all is said and done, we remain mammals. Rules can be laid down to keep the game fair. But nothing will ever entirely eliminate that will, within each of us, to win.
• EXOSPHERE
“… the most likely explanation. Come now, Captain Tikhana. Surely you aren’t taken in by that silly cover story they’re spreading? That America was conducting secret weapons tests aboard Erehwon?” . Teresa shrugged, wondering again why she had let Pedro Manella set up this luncheon meeting in the first place. “Why not?” she responded. “The space secretary denies it. The President denies it. But you press people keep printing it.”
“Exactly!” Manella spread his hands expansively.
“The government’s charade is working perfectly. It’s a venerable tactic. Keep loudly denying something you didn’t do, so nobody will look for what you really did!”
Teresa stared as he twirled a forkful of linguini and made a blithe insouciance of taking it under the portal of his moustache. Fighting a nascent headache, she pressed the pressure points above her eyes. The plastic table top rocked under her elbows, setting plates and glasses quivering.
“Exactly-what-are-you-talking-about?” she said irritably, speaking the words individually. “If you don’t start making sense soon, I’m going to switch languages. Maybe you can make yourself understood in Simglish.”
The reporter gave her a look of distaste. Known to be fluent in nine tongues, he clearly had no love for the experimental bastard son of English and Esperanto.