“It’s all right,” said Nagle, smiling. “Major Montgomery doesn’t mind at all that you had him classified as a mental butterfingers. The important thing is that he no longer is such. He designed this new wing. The incompetent, fearful Montgomery you have known could not have done it. It required the changed, courageous Montgomery who has taken a look in the Mirror and knows what he is capable of doing and is no longer afraid to do it.”
Dodge was silent, then suddenly he grinned and thrust forward his hand to Montgomery. “I guess there’s no use denying we’ve had you pegged for a blockhead right from the beginning. We put you in Firestone because it was a place where you could strut around to your heart’s content without really hurting anything.
“But if these people have done something to you to enable you to create a design like this — well, we’re going to have to find out what it is. I want a look in this Mirror for myself!”
Dr. Spindem opened his mouth tentatively for the first time. His lips moved as if he were having difficulty in speaking. He said finally, “I’ve always fancied myself something of a musical composer. Do you suppose there would be any chance —?”
When the others had gone, Montgomery remained alone with Nagle. They went back to the director’s office.
“I hope you honestly have no regrets that we chose to use you for a guinea pig,” said Nagle. “Everything began moving in on us much faster than we had anticipated, your R&D, the FBI —”
Montgomery shook his head. “I have no regrets. All I ask is that I be allowed to finish now, on the same basis as the others.”
“You don’t believe you have finished? How far do you think there is to go?”
“I suppose that’s the routine you give everybody,” said Montgomery. “At least, I hope you’re not trying to brush me off. You told me I could look in the Mirror and ask myself who I am and what I’m doing. I did that.”
“We are not brushing you off,” said Nagle with deep sincerity. “A man stays as long as he likes. He finishes with the Mirror only when he is able to see nothing new in it.”
“I got just a glimpse of an answer to the question of who and what I am. I’m a human being — Humanity.”
Nagle nodded slowly without speaking.
“It’s in me — all of it,” Montgomery said. “There’s something in me that has been alive since the first spot of slime was thrown up in the seas and energized by a photon to become a living thing — something that has not known death between that moment and now. And all its wisdom and learning is hidden in me — in you, and all of us. I want it.”
“You can have it,” said Nagle, “if you can accept the cost. You know what it’s like. You’ve seen a little, but it’s only a sparkle of light reflected in a drop of water, compared with the full, sweeping image available to you.
“You’ve felt a little of the terror that keeps men from dropping the old, outmoded solutions to problems and facing the problems anew to get fresh, workable answers. If you look any farther, you’ll know that every man is the heir to all the terror and risk the human race has experienced in three billion years of development. It’s the terror that plagues him in nightmares and insanities and whittles his abilities to those of a midget when he ought to be a giant.
“It takes courage. We can stop the Mirror down to a microscopic aperture, so to speak, but you have to contribute your own courage or you will see nothing. If you have it, however, you can make all the wisdom of the race your own personal possession. The kind of wisdom that enabled it to develop through three billion years of boiling and flooding, attack by all other life forms and slaughter by its own kind. He’s made a lot of mistakes, but Man has become a very tough critter, and his wisdom is enormous in a racial sense.”
“I’ll tackle it,” said Montgomery. “I may not make it, but I'm willing to be one of the expendable ones.”
“The expendable ones —”
“It’s my own term, but I think it fits. I got a glimpse of what you meant by the homeostatic mechanisms of the race. The expendable ones are those who dare to attempt functioning without the homeostats.
“I thought that first day you were trying to tell me the homeostats should be destroyed, that the schools, for example, should be replaced. I see I misunderstood you. The school is necessary, so are all the other homeostatic mechanisms, in order for the race to function as a unit.
“The race can’t afford to take a chance. It has to be sure its movement is in a forward direction. Sometimes we think it is going full speed in reverse, but over the last three billion year period the general direction has been forward and up. To make sure it doesn’t go off at a wild tangent and lay itself open to every crackpot idea that comes along, it provides homeostatic controls to suppress the wild fluctuations of its members. The school, the church, the media of communication all act to inform the individual members that This is the Way. Anything else is out of line.
“The controls are pretty hard to keep in adjustment. They get set too low in periods of widespread, compulsory education, as you tried to tell me. Compulsion breeds rebellion, and the school begins to fail as a learning factor. It needs to be put back on the pedestal where it once was, and admission made a goal, not an obstacle.
“As it is, we are approaching a standstill. The One Right Way is suffused with bitterness and rebellion in all segments of society. The fire is burning pretty low.
“Steam-engine time is a fallacy. It’s neither right nor wrong. The race moves forward because of individuals who throw off homeostasis and step out of their culture. It prepares them to take the risk which it cannot take. They are expendable. They may go in the wrong direction and be destroyed. This is of no concern. What matters is the one or two individuals who find a better way. They come back and battle the homeostasis to prove they’ve found it. Sometimes they haven’t the courage to win this battle and the race has to wait for a better man, who can change the homeostatic setting of our institutions. This may be wasteful, but we get a picture of the alternative when dictatorships break up all homeostasis and substitute their own control.”
“We hoped you would see it this far — and want to go on,” said Nagle. “We pushed you pretty hard. Because we knew Dodge was getting set to attack, we more than tripled the natural fear-level control ordinarily used. We couldn’t wait for weeks, we had to have you now.
“Wolfe was sure it had cost you your sanity after that first run. I was a little worried, too, but I knew from your actions that you had to have a great deal of courage or you would not even be alive. I was certain you had faced death somewhere and had licked it positively and deliberately — at terrific cost to yourself.
“The threatened miscarriage was it. You were already so near death that only an organism of extreme determination could have fought its way back. I knew you could take almost anything.”
“Expendable — almost from the very beginning!” said Montgomery with only the faintest trace of bitterness.
“Yes,” said Nagle, “all of us. You’ll find that a billion years ago the race began to prepare you for this moment. It wants us to take an assignment — if we’re willing to accept it. A certain avenue is to be explored. Maybe it’s a blind alley and all our work will end in failure. But we’ll go down it alone. We can afford to take the risk. The race cannot. If we find it’s a good way to go, the race benefits. If we make an error, the race will pass us by, being saved from going the way we have gone.
“It’s a lonely business, but would you have it any other way?”