Party Line

'But you finally contacted Einstein,' said Thomas.

'Yes, he came in a little later.'

'Anything?'

'No, the same as ever. We both got tired after a time, I guess. And talked about something else.'

'Is that the way it often goes?'

'Every now and then. Today we talked about houses. Or I think it was houses. Near as I can make out, they live in some sort of bubble. Got the impression of huge webs with bubbles scattered through them. Do you suppose Einstein could be some sort of spider?'

'Could be,' said Thomas.

'What beats the hell out of me,' said Martin, 'is why Einstein sticks with me. He beats his brains out trying to tell me about FTL and I beat my brains out trying to understand what he's telling me and never getting it. I swear I'm not a great deal closer than I was to start with, but he doesn't give up on me. He just keeps boring in. What I can't figure is what he's getting out of it.'

'Every once in a while I get the funny feeling,' said Garner, 'that maybe these aren't different people who are talking to us. Not a lot of different cultures, but a lot of different individuals, maybe different specialists, from the same society.'

'I doubt that's true,' said Jennie Sherman. 'Mine has a personality. A real personality. And different, very different, from the personalities the rest of you talk about. This one of mine is obsessed with death. .'

'What a doleful subject,' said Rawlins. 'But I guess you've told us about him before. Talking about death all this time…'

'It was depressing to start with,' said Jennie, 'but it's not any more. He's made a philosophy out of it.

At times, he makes death sound almost beautiful.'

'A decadent race,' said Garner.

'It's not that at all. I thought so at first. But he's so joyful about it, so happy.'

'Death, Jennie, is not a joyful or happy subject,' said Thomas. 'We've talked about this, you and I.

Maybe you should put an end to it. Pick up someone else.'

'I will if you say so, Paul. But I have a feeling that something will come out of it. Some new kind of understanding, a new philosophy, a new principle. You haven't looked at the data, have you?'

Thomas shook his head.

'I can't tell why I feel this way,' she said. 'But deep down, at the bottom of me, I do.'

'For the moment,' said Thomas, 'that's good enough for me.'

Rawlins said, 'Jay spoke of something that bugs me, too. What are they getting out of it? What are any of them getting out of it? We're giving them nothing.'

'That's your guilt talking,' said Thomas. 'Perhaps it's something all of us are feeling. We must get rid of it. Wipe it from our minds. We feel intensely that we are beginners, that we're the new kid in the neighborhood. We are takers, not givers, although that's not entirely true. Dick has spent weeks trying to explain economics to his people.'

Garner made a wry face. 'Trying is all I do. I try to reduce the basics to the lowest common denominator. Thoughts of one syllable. Each syllable said slowly. Printed in big type. And they don't seem to get it. As if the very idea of economics was completely alien to them. As if hearing it were somehow distasteful. How in the world could a civilization develop and have any continuity without an economic system? I can't envision it. With us, economics is our life blood. We'd be nothing without an economic system. We'd be in chaos.'

'Maybe that's what they're in,' said Rawlins. 'Maybe chaos is a way of life for them. No rules, no regulations, nothing. Although even as I say it, that doesn't sound quite right. Such a situation would be beyond our understanding, as repugnant to us as our economics seem to be to them.'

'We all have our blind spots,' said Thomas. 'We're beginning to find that out.'

'It would help though, it would help a lot,' said Martin, 'if we could feel we'd done something for one or two of them. It would give us a feeling of status, of having paid our dues.'

'We're new at it,' said Thomas. The time will come. How are you getting along with your robot, Hal?'

'Damned if I know,' said Rawlins. 'I can't pin him down to anything. I can't get in a word. This robot, if it is a robot, if it's some sort of computer system-and for the life of me, I can't tell you why I think it is. But, anyhow, it is a non-stop talker. Information, most of it trivial, I suspect, just flows out of it. Never sticks to one thing. Talks about one thing, then goes chattering off to something entirely unrelated. As if it had a memory bank filled to the brim with data and trying, as rapidly as possible, to spew out all that information. When I pick up something that seems to have some promise to it, something that could be of more than usual interest, I try to break in to talk at greater length about it, to ask some questions. Most often I can't break in, occasionally there are times I can. But when I do this, he is impatient with me. He cuts off the discussion and goes back to his chatter. There are times when I get the impression that he's not talking to me alone, but to a lot of other people. I have the idea that when I am able to break in, he uses one circuit to talk with me directly while he goes on talking to all those others through other circuits.'

Thomas put his empty glass on the table beside him, rose to his feet. 'The others are starting in for dinner,' he said. 'Shall we join them.'

VI

Robert Allen, the project psychiatrist, rotated the brandy snifter between his palms.

'You sent word you wanted to see me, Paul. Has something come up?'

'I don't think so,' Thomas said. 'Not anything I can put a finger on. Maybe just a bad day, that's all.

Ben Russell was in to raise hell with me. Said we were holding back on him.'

'He's always saying that.'

'I know. He's probably catching heat himself. When he catches heat, he turns it back on me. A feedback mechanism. A defensive gesture. He was upset that we'd not passed FTL data on to him.'

'Have we got anything to pass?-'

'Just a lot of nothing. Some meaningless equations. I don't see how Jay stands up under it. He picked up that allergy of his again.'

'Tension,' said Allen. 'Frustration. That could bring it on.'

'Later in the day,' said Thomas, 'Brown phoned.'

The senator?'

'The senator. It was FTL again. He was all over me. The budget's coming up again.'

'Faster-than-light is something that the administrative mind can understand,' said Allen. 'Hardware.'

'Bob, I'm not too sure it's hardware. It could be something else. Jay's an astrophysicist. If it was plain physics, he would have it pegged.'

'Maybe there are many kinds of physics.'

'I don't think so. Physics should be basic. The same throughout the universe.'

'You can be sure of that?'

'No, I can't be sure of that. But my logic rejects…'

'Paul, you're over-reacting. If I were you, I'd disregard this sudden flurry over FTL. It's something that comes periodically and then dies down again.'

'I can't disregard it,' said Thomas. 'Not this time. Brown's out to get us. His power base is slipping and he needs a new issue. We would make a good issue. Here we are, here we've been for a quarter century, gobbling up tax money that could be used for something else. That's the kind of issue the people would accept. They definitely are not with us; they have a feeling that we were crammed down their throats. They were never with us. Not only do we cost a lot, but we pose threats. What if we gave away our location, so that some barbaric, bloodthirsty alien horde could come crashing in on us? What if we find out something that would upset the apple-cart, wrecking a lot of our time-honored, comfortable concepts?'

'You mean he'd destroy us just to get elected?'

'Bob, you don't know politics. I am sure he would. Even if he believed in us, he might. I have a feeling that he doesn't believe in us. If he destroyed us, he'd be a public hero. We have to do something, come up with something in the next few months or he'll have a go at us.'