The Institute was located in the small northern California town of Casa Buena, on the coast near the Oregon border. Montgomery drove from Seattle alone, following Gunderson and his family by a day. It had been decided that Montgomery’s wife, Helen, and their two children would remain where they were since this might be a quite temporary assignment.
The major checked in at one of the two resort hotels as soon as he arrived in Casa Buena. His next act was arrangement of the phone scrambler and a report to Dodge — and to Dr. Spindem, who listened in on most of his conversations. This fact inspired a persistent irritation like that of an irremovable splinter in the hand.
It was midafternoon, but when he finally called Gunderson he was told to hurry over. Their initial interviews could be taken care of at once.
The school was at the edge of town on a low bluff overlooking the ocean. It occupied a set of old California-Spanish style structures that once housed an unsuccessful summer resort. Heavy foliage screened it from the road. The interior court had been landscaped to a Mediterranean garden — with only a slight touch of Hollywood. It formed a kind of “campus” on which numerous students lounged in the shade as Montgomery and Gunderson walked toward the administration building. Montgomery could not help staring as he recognized at a distance the features of men whose brains literally controlled large segments of the aircraft industry.
In the office, a secretary took their names and announced their presence over the interphone.
“Dr. Berkeley will see you, Mr. Gunderson,” she said, “and Dr. Nagle will see Major Montgomery.”
Montgomery felt a spasm of apprehension. The success of his whole operation here depended on the next few minutes. He managed to grin back at Gunderson as the engineer held up a circled forefinger and thumb. Then he was gone.
A door opened to Montgomery’s left and the girl ushered him into the presence of a pleasantly sharp-eyed man in his middle forties. “Dr. Nagle,” said the girl, “this is Major Montgomery.”
“Come in, major,” said Dr. Nagle. “We already know something of your background, and it was indeed a pleasure to receive your application.”
They sat on opposite sides of a large, mahogany desk and surveyed each other a moment. “One of the first things we like to know,” said Dr. Nagle, “is why a man chose to apply for admission to the Institute in the first place.”
Montgomery’s face sobered. He paused a long moment, both for the hoped-for effect of impressing Nagle — and to collect his own full quota of reassurance. He had rehearsed this to himself for the last six weeks. Now to see if he could put it over.
“As you may know,” he said, “Soren Gunderson and I have worked closely together during the past four years in building the XB-91.” As Nagle nodded, Montgomery went on. He borrowed as closely as he dared the bitter objections Gunderson had made to the Ninety-one. He modified and embellished, adding items of his own, all the while watching carefully the reactions of Nagle’s expression.
“Soren and I have felt there ought to be some answer to this inadequacy of our engineering. When he began hearing about the Institute, I was immediately interested also in the possibility that some solution had been found. Of course, I was frankly dubious,” he said with a smile. “You can’t expect a man not to be — but I decided I wanted to find out for myself.”
Nagle’s expression changed but little during Montgomery’s story. As the engineer finished, he said, “Did you do anything during the building of the plane to try to eliminate some of these troublesome complexities?”
“Well, yes — during the time the wings were in design I felt there ought to be another answer to the tremendous demand for lift at the ship’s service altitude. It was just a fuzzy sense that there ought to be some other way of building it. I worked out a few sketches on my own, but nothing came of it.”
Nagle remained silent, watching him as if speculating over the truth of his statements. “Gunderson calls his plane a monster — a failure,” he said finally. “And he’s right. From an engineering standpoint the thing is quite ridiculous. It’s the end product of our ‘bigger and better’ creed, which has been our standard for some time. Bigger planes, bigger automobiles, bigger plants — laboratories — schools — houses. You know how it works in your organization. A supervisor rates a grade higher when his personnel reaches thirty in number, so he phonies up enough projects and recruits the additional men. For every honest administrator there are a dozen empire builders working their pet researches into the status of major projects — with them at the head.”
Montgomery started to protest involuntarily. “R&D isn’t —”
Nagle cut him short. “The problem has been with us for a long time, but only in the last decade has it been felt as severely as it is right now. Our need for creative engineering and design has been more intense than ever before, and we have increased our efforts to obtain it proportionately. The result has been to greatly magnify all the obstacles which have always stood in our way.
“We have become aware that we are in the midst of a famine of genuine, new basic ideas. The XB-91 is a monument to this famine. It was built from the mountains of data we have collected, but it is not the product of invention and research.”
“The nation has done everything possible to foster technological growth,” said Montgomery. “Our engineering schools have never operated at the peak they now are.”
Nagle smiled slowly as if enjoying a joke briefly at the major’s expense. “You are quite right. More schools and more engineers than ever before. Yet the problems represented by the XB-91 are not being solved by the kind of thinking coming out of our engineering schools today.”
“Why not? Do you consider the schools themselves responsible?”
“Actually — no, the schools are not responsible. There are scores of factors, but standing well out in front is our misevaluation of what public education is supposed to accomplish.”
“Certainly, one of its major aims is to produce an adequate corps of creative engineers!”
Nagle shook his head. “No. But in order to understand the failure of any mechanism it is best to inquire if the mechanism was designed to perform the failed function in the first place.
“The school is a peculiar institution. Even its personnel are regarded as public property. The control imposed by a community upon its school-teachers has long been a stock source of humor, but there’s nothing funny in it to anyone who’s ever experimented with making the school anything but the strict, literal voice of the community.
“Educational systems have always been a source of public pride, whether in Rome of the fourteenth century, or Paris, or London, or Podunk Corners, U.S.A. New advances in education are announced with great fanfare. In reality, however, the school never changes. Its basic purpose today is the same as it was when Egyptian boys studied the Book of the Dead to learn how departed souls must act to obtain happiness.
“It existed in the ancient synagogues, the military barracks of Sparta, the gymnasiums of Athens, the harsh discipline of Roman schools. It was in the church schools and universities of the Middle Ages, as well as in Napoleonic France where the system was geared to reverence for the new emperor, ‘given by God.’ It’s painful to attempt an evaluation of our own current system, but the basic purpose is there.