“Put a hole in this with that punch,” he said, motioning Themus toward the other plate, which he had laid flat on the workbench.
Themus hesitated. “Come, come, boy. Don’t dawdle.”
The Watcher stepped to the workbench, set the punch on the plate and tapped lightly till he had a hole started. Then he placed the punch in it again and brought the hammer down on its head with two swift strokes. The clangs rang loud in the dim basement. The punch sank through the plate and went a quarter-inch into the table. “I didn’t hit it very hard,” Themus explained, looking over his shoulder at “Santa Claus.”
“That’s all right. It’s very soft steel. Too many impurities. Kyben spacecraft are made of a steel which isn’t too much better than this, though they back it with strong reinforcers. Now watch.”
He took the plate in his hand, holding it between thumb and forefinger at one corner, letting it hang down. With the other hand he pinched it at the opposite corner, pressing thumb and forefinger together tightly.
The plate crumbled to dust, drifting down over the old man’s pinching hand in a bright stream.
Themus’s mouth opened of its own accord, his chest tightened. Such a thing wasn’t possible. The old man was a magician.
The dust glowed up at him from the floor. It was slightly luminous. He goggled, unable to help himself.
“Now,” said Boolbak, taking the other plate. “Put a hole in this one.”
Themus found he was unable to lift the hammer. His hands refused to obey. One did not see such things and remain untouched.
“Snap out of it, boy! Come on, punch!” The old man’s voice was commanding; Themus broke his trance.
He placed the punch on the second plate and in three heavy blows had gone through it and into the table again.
“Fine, fine,” said Uncle Boolbak, holding the second plate as he had the first. He pinched it, with a slight revolving movement of the fingers.
The steel seemed to change. It stayed rigid in shape, but the planes of it darkened, ran together. It was a flat piece of metal, but suddenly it seemed to have depths, other surfaces.
Boolbak held it out to Themus, “Put another hole in it.”
Themus took it, wonderingly, and laid it down on the workbench. It seemed heavier than before. He brought the hammer down sharply, three times.
The metal was unmarred.
He set the punch and hammered again, harder, half a dozen times. He took the punch away. Its point was dulled, the punch shank was slightly bowed. The metal was unscarred.
“It’s—it’s—” he began, his tongue abruptly becoming a wad of cotton batting in his mouth.
Boolbak nodded, “It’s changed, yes. It is now harder than any steel ever made. It can withstand heat or cold that would either melt to paste or shatter to splinters any other metal. It is impregnable. It is the ideal war metal. With it an army is invincible. It is the closest thing to an ultimate weapon ever devised, for it is unstoppable.
“A tank composed of this metal would be a fearsome juggernaut. A spaceship of it could pierce the corona of a sun. A soldier wearing body armor of it would be a superman.” He stood back, his lips a thin line, letting Themus look dumbfoundedly at the plate he held.
“But how do you—how can you—it’s impossible! How can you make this? What have you done to it?” Themus felt the room swirl around him, but that defied the laws of the universe.
“Sit down. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you some things.” He put one arm around Themus’s shoulders, leading him to a flight of stairs, to sit down.
Themus looked at Darfla. She was biting her lip. Was this the talk the Crackpots did not want him to have with Uncle Boolbak?
Themus sensed: this is it. This is an answer. Perhaps not the answer to all that troubled him, but it was, unquestionably, an answer.
Suddenly he didn’t want to know. He was afraid; terribly afraid. He stammered. “Do-do you think you should? I’m a Watcher, you know, and I don’t want to—”
The old man cut him off with a wave of his hand, and pushed him down firmly.
“You think you’re watching us, don’t you?” began Boolbak. “I mean, you think the Watcher Corps was assigned here to keep an eye on all the loonies, don’t you? To keep the black sheep in the asylum so the star-flung Kyben don’t lose face or esteem in the Galaxy, isn’t that it?”
Themus nodded, reluctantly, not wanting to insult the old man.
Boolbak laughed. “Fool! We want you here. Do you think for a moment we’d allow you blundering pompous snoopers around if we didn’t have a use for you?
“Let me tell you a story,” the old man went on. “Hundreds of years ago, before what you blissfully call the Kyben Explosion into space, both Crackpots and Stuffed Shirts lived here, though they weren’t divided that way, back then. The Stuffed Shirts were the administrators, the implements of keeping everything neatly filed, and everyone in line. That type seems to gravitate toward positions of influence and power.
“The Crackpots were the nonconformists. They were the ones who kept coming up with the new ideas. They were the ones who painted the great works of art. They were the ones who composed the most memorable music. They were the ones who overflowed the lunatic asylums. They thought up the great ideas, true, but they were a thorn in the side of the Stuffs, because they couldn’t be predicted. They kept running off in all directions at once. They were a regimental problem. So the Stuffs tried to keep them in line, gave them tedious little chores to do, compartmentalized them in thought, in habits, in attitudes. The noncons snapped. There is no record of it, but there was almost a war on this planet that would have wiped out every Kyben—of both breeds—to the last man.”
He rubbed a hand across his eyes, as if to wipe away unpleasant images.
Themus and Darfla listened, intently, their eyes fastened to those of the old man in his ridiculous costume. Themus knew Darfla must have heard the story before, but still she strained to catch every sound Boolbak made.
“Luckily, the cooler heads won. An alternate solution was presented and carried out. You’ve always thought the Kyben left their misfits, the Crackpots, behind. That we were left here because we weren’t good enough, that we would disgrace our hard-headed pioneers before the other races, isn’t that the story you’ve always heard? That we are the black sheep of the Kyben?”
He laughed, shaking his head.
“Fools! We threw you out! We didn’t want you tripping all over our heels, annoying us. We weren’t left behind—you were thrown away!”
Themus’s breath caught in his throat. It was true. He knew it was true. He had no doubts. It was so. In the short space of a few seconds the whole structure of his life had been inverted. He was no longer a member of the elite corps of the elite race of the universe; he was a clod, an unwanted superfluousness, a tin soldier, a carbon copy.
He started to say something, but Boolbak cut him off. “We have nothing against ruling the Galaxy. We like the idea, in fact. Makes things nice when we want something unusual and it takes influence to get it quickly. But why should we bother doing the work when we can pull a string or two and one of you armor-plated puppets will perform the menial tasks.
“Certainly we allow you to rule the Galaxy. It keeps you out of trouble, and out of our hair. You rule the Galaxy, but we rule you!”
Thunder rolled endlessly through the Watcher’s head. He was being bombarded with lightning, and he was certain any moment he would rip apart. It was too much, all too suddenly.
Boolbak was still talking: “We keep the Watcher Corps on other worlds both for spying purposes and as a cover-up. So we can have a Watcher Corps here on Kyba without attracting any attention to ourselves. A few hundred of you aren’t that much bother, and it’s ridiculously easy to avoid you when we wish to. Better than a whole planet of you insufferable bores.”