The automatic door opened. Doyle sat looking at the tall man who crossed the threshold. Vincent Carfax, chairman of the Committee for Public Welfare, inclined his bald head in greeting.
“Your excellency!” he acknowledged, and stepped forward to shake hands.
Doyle waved him to a chair. Carfax was an inhuman index of a man who carried endless statistics in his agile brain. Poker-faced, emaciated as a skeleton, it was his proud boast that he had never been known to smile.
“You will overlook the lateness of the hour, Mr. President?” he asked at length in his precise voice.
“I was about to leave,” Doyle answered. “However, only an important matter could bring you here, Carfax. What is it?”
“Unrest.”
“Unrest?” President Doyle raised his eyebrows. “Unrest in Major City? My dear fellow!”
“Unrest!” Carfax insisted. “I have suspected it for a long time, but have refrained from bringing it to your notice until I was absolutely certain. Now I have conclusive evidence. Major City is resting on quicksand, your excellency.”
Doyle pondered for a moment. “Tell me about it,” he invited.
“The facts are plain,” Carfax answered slowly. “The reaction of perfect security after many years spent in wars and struggle is going directly against the adaptive strain Nature builds up. I have had the First in Biology check on that. The human body and mind, keyed to every emergency, had until recently something it could grapple with. Now there is nothing but perfection. The mind has of necessity to find a new form of excitation in order to maintain its equilibrium. Do I make it clear?”
“I provided science for the people,” President Doyle said quietly. “Is not that exciting enough?”
“Science, sir, is for the chosen few. Men such as you and I, and all the other master-brains who have brought this sublime state into being, are different. Call them geniuses if you will. At least they do not represent the masses. I have been forced to the unpleasant realization that very few minds are adapted to scientific study. Just as in the pre-Wars Era a man accepted the electric light for what it is without involving himself in the electronic processes embodied in it, so today there is that same aspect of laziness and torpor—and there, Mr. President, lie the seeds of unrest and mischief.”
Doyle smiled. “It can be stopped. The Congress has the power.”
“This goes deeper than you realize,” Carfax said, shaking his bald head, “It is not confined to Major City. It exists nearly everywhere. So much so I felt it my duty to warn you. If this unrest is, not quelled it means—back to war!”
The Chief Executive was silent.
“There is a. way,” Carfax said.
“There is?”
“It is becoming increasingly clear that the Last War did not entirely kill the belief in men’s minds that force of arms is the only sure way to Right. The element of unrest now present will grow rapidly. At the moment it takes the form of vicious words. It would like to build up a barrier against all things scientific and tear down the perfect structure we have created. But I say—if I may—that the close of the Last War really did end war for ever.”
“Perhaps.” The President smiled gravely.
“Listen,” Carfax resumed, tapping his finger emphatically on the desk. “We must forever outlaw war as a disease. Until now Man has not had sufficient power at his disposal—scientific power that is—to make his dreams come true. The earlier men tried it with pacts, treaties, and leagues of nations—and they all came to grief—because there was no science back of them.”
“And now?”
“Now, with tremendous scientific resources at our command, we can make a stand against this eternal enemy of progress, destroy it while it is still young.” Carfax hesitated briefly and looked apologetic. “What I am about to say, your Excellency, may make it appear I am teaching you your business. You will forgive that?”
Doyle shrugged. “Only a fool refuses to learn. Continue.”
“Many years ago men adopted the principle of arbitration,” Carfax resumed. “They were enlightened enough, in civil matters at least, to place any matter of dispute, particularly in instances of capital and labor, before a council usually composed of three experts. That council was vested with complete power to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ upon the point at issue. Thus matters were arbitrated. Endeavors were made, futilely enough, to devise an arbitration scheme between nations
“The principle of arbitration relied on the good faith of nations to seek arbitration, but was lost in a welter of power politics, and overcome with greed, backed by terrific man power and armaments. Wars followed wars. Arbitration was ignored. But, sir, the idea was not lost. Why cannot a new arbiter arise? Not a man, not three men—but twelve! In olden times a jury was usually composed of twelve men and women. So in respect to that judicial tradition let it still be twelve. Twelve—to arbitrate!”
President Doyle sighed a little. “An excellent idea, old friend. But what twelve men or women, however competent, would be accepted by the masses as sole judges?”
“There comes the difference!” the Statistician said calmly. “I have been investigating on my own account. Ever since this unrest began I have pondered the idea of an Arbiter. I have interviewed at great length, twelve men and women—each one of them equipped with the finest brain in the world for their particular sphere. The twelve major sciences of present day civilization can each have a master at the head. Yes, I have talked with them. Each one of them has foreseen as we have the grim fate that awaits mankind if unrest is allowed to prevail. Now I have their assurance, once the word is made lawful by you, that each one of them is prepared to sacrifice their life for the particular science they control in order that the future of mankind may be assured.”
Doyle sat bolt upright. “Sacrifice their life!” he cried. “What on earth do you mean, man? Why should they?”
“Because there can be no other way to make a true Arbiter!”
The President got to his feet, stood by the window with his hands clasped behind him. “Go on,” he said, lost in thought.
“Twelve brains will be pooled for the common good,” Carfax explained. “Twelve brains will work in unison to provide a common answer, and a just one, for every conceivable difficulty in every walk of life. Twelve brains, functioning as one unit, will be the judge of humanity’s future actions and set discord at naught.”
“Even brains die,” President Doyle pointed out, turning. “It is only putting off the vital issue for a short period. When the brains die the old trouble will be back. This is just—just a temporary panacea, making things comfortable for the present age. What of posterity, Carfax? This is the problem.”
“The brains will never die!” the Statistician said, and at Doyle’s look of astonishment he was tempted to smile. But remembering his one boast he didn’t.
“I said we could outlaw unrest and war forever, Mr. President. This is no hasty plan. I have conferred with Gascoyne, the First in Anatomy. He says the plan I have devised is feasible. Did it ever occur to you what a poor instrument the brain is for the interpretation of thought?”
“Often. What of it?”
“Gascoyne has asked himself that question long enough to find an answer. We of this age know science agrees that thought is everywhere, that it is expressed in greater or lesser degree according to the quality of the ‘receiver’ or brain interpreting it. According to Gascoyne a brain is basically an electronic machine—a radio receiver, if you wish it. In proportion to its quality it absorbs and uses the ideas of all-pervading mind and expresses ideas clearly or badly through the medium of a physical body, which in itself is an expression of mind-force.”