“I didn’t know you could put these things on manual,” Robert said wonderingly.
Merry grinned as he reached under the dash and disengaged a wire. “It’s against Federal law, except in emergencies. But they couldn’t afford to have aircars dropping like rocks all over the place just because a computer went out somewhere. And I suppose you might call this an emergency.” He leaned back, handling the controls. “There. We can worry about Federal laws later. Right now, let’s just get wherever it is we’re going.”
Gail told him the Springfield District co-ordinates, and the aircar settled on a steady northerly course. “Fine,” Hank said. “And next, maybe you’d better tell me what this Threshold business is. I’m still in the dark.”
As briefly as she could, Gail filled him in on the story of the early, disastrous discovery of the Threshold universe, her own first experience there, and its aftermath.
“Then you can cross into this…this place…anytime you want?” Hank asked.
“Pretty much,” Gail said. “I don’t very often. You got a taste of what it feels like; I have the same sort of reaction, except that I’m prepared for it.”
“What about Robert, here?”
“Robert doesn’t have the same trouble, partly because he’s used to it, and partly because he’s been crossing over ever since he was very small.” Gail smiled. “My mind is so used to the way things are in this universe, with its three dimensions, its light, color, sound, shape, and everything else that I can’t make any sense at all of the Other Side. Things there are just flatly impossible, to my mind. Robert at least has parallel experience with the way things are on the Other Side as well as on this side. Some of his circuits are connected, you might say. He has trouble explaining what he encounters over there, but at least everything there isn’t wrong, to him. So he can pass through and back without having his wits jarred loose.”
Merry frowned. “Why can’t you explain what you find over there?” he asked Robert.
“Well, maybe I can give you an example,” Robert said. “Suppose you stuck your hand in a pail of warm water. Your hand would feel warm then, wouldn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“And you could tell people that, and they’d know what you meant. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Then suppose you stuck your hand in a pail of soapy water, how would that feel?”
“Well, soapy, I suppose. But I don’t see—”
Robert shook his head. “That’s fine, too, and other people could understand you. But suppose you stuck your hand in a pail of water and your hand felt green. How would you explain that to somebody else?”
“What do you mean, felt green?”
“Just what I said,” Robert replied. “Green.”
“Well, that’s nonsense. Nobody’s hand can feel green.”
“Ah, but suppose that with this particular pail of water, without any warning, that happens to be exactly how your hand feels—green. Not warm, not cold, not wet, not soapy—just green. How would you explain it? You wouldn’t. You couldn’t tell anybody how your hand felt, not really. You could tell them it felt funny in some way, odd, different, but you couldn’t tell them it felt green. But suppose the simple fact was that that was precisely how it felt, no other way.” Robert shrugged. “So you’re stuck. Part of your mind tells you, ‘This is nonsense, this is impossible,’ but another part is telling you at the same time, very distinctly, that your hand feels green, no matter what it looks like. And if you aren’t used to this kind of thing, you can block the idea, or deny your senses, or sit chewing your nails down to the elbows trying to figure it out but you won’t find any way to explain it, or to accept it. Hand feeling green equals nonsense, and that is that.”
Robert looked at Hank and grinned. “Don’t look so confused,” he said. “I know what I’m talking about. Because in that Threshold universe it just so happens that your hand can feel green. At least mine can. Not always, but sometimes. Just the same way that something on my tongue can taste bright. Or that something I see looks melodic in the key of A minor. Or something sounds slippery. It’s all the same thing. None of it is possible, but it’s there. You either adjust to it, or it drives you batty. And you can’t change it to fit in with your experience. You just have to add on a new item: ‘In this place, under these circumstances, for reasons I don’t understand and in a way I can’t comprehend, my hand feels green.’ ” Robert grinned.
“So there you are. Clear as mud? Or do you see what I’m talking about?”
Hank Merry shook his head. “I’m beginning to see why McEvoy’s investigators lost their wits, if that’s what you mean.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Robert said. “Adults get their environments lodged pretty firmly in their minds. Tilt the environment a little, and they lie to themselves to overcome the tilt. Have you seen the tilt-houses that they have at the Hoffman Center? Where the walls and ceiling are painted on a slant, and you find yourself bending over trying to climb up a steeply inclined floor, when the floor is really as flat as a desk top? It’s a shock; your senses can’t adjust, so they start telling you lies. They say the floor has to be tilting up because the rest of the house tilts up; there just isn’t any house where the walls tilt up and the floor stays flat.
Therefore, it’s impossible.”
Merry nodded. “And if you throw too many ‘impossibles’ at a man all at once, he just blocks them all and withdraws.”
“Exactly,” Robert said. “If the jolt is too rough, he may not come back, either. He may just stay withdrawn, or deranged, or whatever you want to call it.”
The aircar hit a down draft and dropped fifty feet, then righted itself. The concentration of lights in New Haven District lay below them now.
“Okay,” Hank said unhappily. “I’ll try to gulp that down; but how did your mother manage to come out better than the others?”
“A combination of native ability and experience,” Gail said. “Call it a high adjustment threshold, or high adaptability. And I’d actually been working to learn how to adjust better.
Even so, I couldn’t handle the Other Side. I still can’t. I can tolerate it for brief periods, nothing more. Then everything in my mind says it’s impossible, and I have to get out of there.
“But Robert started crossing through when he had no conscious data in his mind at all.
He literally grew up with it, so that the Other Side became as much a part of his normal experience, when he was there, as this side was when he was here. After all, a tilt-house only throws you because it disagrees with what your mind says is true, from long experience.
Put a new-born baby in a tilt-house half the time and in a normal room the other half, and something different happens. The baby grows up recognizing that there are two places, inside the tilt-house and outside. He knows they’re different but neither one upsets him, because his whole experience tells him that one set of rules works inside and a different set works outside. He does fine, just as long as he doesn’t try to make ‘inside’ rules apply to ‘outside’ or vice versa.” Gail paused. “My husband thinks it may go deeper than that, with Robert, that he may actually be using some nervous system connections we don’t know about, or that aren’t normally in use. But when Ed gets into metabolism and neurophysiology, even I get confused.”
The aircar had started dropping steadily now, and Springfield District lights spread out below. As they settled down to a landing slot on the roof of the Benedict apartment, Hank Merry sat shaking his head and looking at his hands and wondering how…how…anybody’s hand could conceivably feel green.