Speaker 1: Sweet Mental by Randal Garrett. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: by Julie Carter. Sweet Men Tell by Randal Garrett. Overture
Speaker 1: a daggio mysterioso. The neurosurgeon peeled the thin surgical gloves
Speaker 1: from his hands as the nurse blotted the perspiration from
Speaker 1: his forehead for the last time after the long, grueling hours.
Speaker 1: They're waiting outside for you, doctor, she said quietly. The
Speaker 1: neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were still finishing
Speaker 1: up the operation, attending to the little finishing touches that
Speaker 1: did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist, such
Speaker 1: things as suturing up a scalp and applying bandages. The
Speaker 1: nurse took the sterile mask no longer sterile now, while
Speaker 1: the doctor washed and dried his hands. Where are they,
Speaker 1: he asked, finally, out in the hall? I suppose, she nodded.
Speaker 1: You'll probably have to push them out of the way
Speaker 1: to get out of surgery. Her prediction was almost perfect.
Speaker 1: The group of men in conservative business suits, wearing conservative
Speaker 1: ties and holding conservative soft felt hats in their hands,
Speaker 1: were standing just outside the door. Doctor Mallan glanced at
Speaker 1: the five of them, letting his eyes stop on the
Speaker 1: face of the tallest. He may live, the doctor said, briefly.
Speaker 1: You don't sound very optimistic, Doctor Mallan, said the FBI
Speaker 1: man Malan shook his head frankly. I'm not. He was
Speaker 1: shot laterally, just above the right temple with what looks
Speaker 1: to me like a three fifty seven magnum pistol slug.
Speaker 1: It's in there, he gestured back toward the room he
Speaker 1: had just left. You can have it if you want.
Speaker 1: It passed completely through the brain, lodging on the other
Speaker 1: side of the head, just inside the skull. MOK kept
Speaker 1: him alive. I'll never know, but I can guarantee that
Speaker 1: he might as well be dead. It was a rather
Speaker 1: nasty way to lobottomize man, but it was effective, I
Speaker 1: can assure you. The Federal agent frowned, puzzledly. Lobottomized like
Speaker 1: those operations they do on psychotics, similar, said Malin. But
Speaker 1: no psychotic was ever butchered up like this, And what
Speaker 1: I had to do to him to save his life
Speaker 1: didn't help anything. The men looked at each other. Then
Speaker 1: the big one said, I'm sure you did the best
Speaker 1: you could. Doctor Mallin. The neurosurgeon rubbed the back of
Speaker 1: his hand across his forehead and looked steadily into the
Speaker 1: eyes of the big man. You wanted him alive, he
Speaker 1: said slowly, And I have a duty to save life.
Speaker 1: But frankly, I think we'll all eventually wish we had
Speaker 1: the common human decency to let Paul Wendell die. Excuse me, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: I don't feel well. He turned abruptly and strode off
Speaker 1: down the hall. One of the men in the conservative
Speaker 1: suits said, Louis Pastore lived through most of his life
Speaker 1: with only half a brain, and he never even knew it.
Speaker 1: Frank maybe, yeah, maybe, said the big man. But I
Speaker 1: don't know whether to hope he does or hope he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He used his right thumb nail to pick a bit
Speaker 1: of microscopic dust from beneath his left index finger, studying
Speaker 1: the operation without actually seeing it. Meanwhile, we've got to
Speaker 1: decide what to do about the rest of those screw balls.
Speaker 1: Wendell was the only sane one, and therefore the most dangerous,
Speaker 1: but the rest of them aren't what you'd call safe either.
Speaker 1: The others nodded in a chorus of silent agreement. Nocturne
Speaker 1: temple du voce. Now, what's the matter with me? Thought
Speaker 1: Paul Wendell. He could feel nothing, absolutely nothing, no taste,
Speaker 1: no sight, no hearing, no anything. Am I breathing? He
Speaker 1: couldn't feel any breathing, nor, for that matter, could he
Speaker 1: feel heat, nor cold nor pain. Am I dead? No?
Speaker 1: At least I don't feel dead. Who am I? What
Speaker 1: am I? No answer? Coquito ergosum? What did that mean?
Speaker 1: There was something quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite
Speaker 1: tell what it was. I did seem to come from nowhere,
Speaker 1: fragments of concepts that seemed to have no reference. What
Speaker 1: did that mean? What is a reference a concept? He
Speaker 1: felt he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use
Speaker 1: they were? He didn't know. There was something wrong, and
Speaker 1: he had to find out what it was, and he
Speaker 1: had to find out through the only method of investigation
Speaker 1: left open to him, So he thought about it. Sonata
Speaker 1: Allegro Cumbrio, the President of the United States, finished reading
Speaker 1: the sheaf of papers before him, laid them neatly to
Speaker 1: one side and looked up at the big man seated
Speaker 1: across the desk from him. Is this everything, Frank? He asked,
Speaker 1: that's everything, mister President. Everything we know. We've got eight
Speaker 1: men locked up in Saint Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic,
Speaker 1: and one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get
Speaker 1: anything out of them. The President leaned back in his chair.
Speaker 1: I really can't quite understand it. Extrasensory perception, Why should
Speaker 1: it drive men insane? Wendell's papers don't say enough. He
Speaker 1: claims it can be mathematically worked out, that he did
Speaker 1: work it out, but we don't have any proof of that.
Speaker 1: The man named Frank scowled. Wasn't that demonstration of his
Speaker 1: proof enough? A small, graying, intelligent faced man who had
Speaker 1: been sitting silently listening to the conversation, spoke at last,
Speaker 1: mister President, I'm afraid I still don't completely understand the problem.
Speaker 1: If we could go over it and get it straightened out,
Speaker 1: he left the sentence hanging expectantly. Certainly, this Paul Wendell
Speaker 1: is a well, he called himself a psionic mathematician. Actually,
Speaker 1: he had quite a respectable reputation in the mathematical field.
Speaker 1: He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but he
Speaker 1: dropped it several years ago, said that the human mind
Speaker 1: couldn't be worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied
Speaker 1: various branches of psychology and eventually dropped them all. He
Speaker 1: built several of those queer psionic machines, gold detectors, and
Speaker 1: something he called a hexer. He's done a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. Evidently, sounds like he was unable to make
Speaker 1: up his mind, said the small man. The President shook
Speaker 1: his head firmly. Not at all. He did new creative
Speaker 1: work in every one of the fields he touched. He
Speaker 1: was considered something of a mystic, but not a crackpot
Speaker 1: or a screwball. But anyhow, the point is that he
Speaker 1: evidently found what he'd been looking for for years. He
Speaker 1: asked for an appointment with me. I okayed the request
Speaker 1: because of his reputation. He would only tell me that
Speaker 1: he'd stumbled across something that was vital to national defense
Speaker 1: and the future of mankind. But I felt that in
Speaker 1: view of the work he had done, he was entitled
Speaker 1: to a hearing. And he proved to you beyond any
Speaker 1: doubt that he had this power, the small man asked.
Speaker 1: Frank shifted his big body uneasily in his chair. He
Speaker 1: certainly did, mister secretary. The President nodded. I know it
Speaker 1: might not sound too impressive when her second hand, but
Speaker 1: Paul Wendell could tell me more of what was going
Speaker 1: on in the world than our central intelligence agents have
Speaker 1: been able to dig up in twenty years. And he
Speaker 1: claimed he could teach the trick to any one. I
Speaker 1: told him I'd think it over naturally, my first step
Speaker 1: was to make sure that he was followed twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day. A man with information like that simply
Speaker 1: could not be allowed to fall into enemy's hands. The
Speaker 1: President scowled, as though angry with himself. I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: say that I didn't realize the full potentialities of what
Speaker 1: he had said for several days until I got Frank's
Speaker 1: first report. You could hardly be expected to, mister President,
Speaker 1: Frank said, After all, something like that is pretty heady stuff.
Speaker 1: I think I follow you, said the secretary. You found
Speaker 1: he was already teaching this trick to others. The President
Speaker 1: glanced at the FBI man. Frank said, that's right. He
Speaker 1: was holding meetings classes. I suppose you'd call him twice
Speaker 1: a week. There were eight men who came regularly. That's
Speaker 1: when I gave the order to have them all picked up.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine what would happen if everybody could be
Speaker 1: taught to use this ability, or even a small minority,
Speaker 1: they'd rule the world, said the secretary softly. The President
Speaker 1: shrugged that off. That's a small item. Really, the point
Speaker 1: is that nothing would be hidden from any one. The
Speaker 1: way we play the game of life to day is
Speaker 1: similar to playing poker. We keep a straight face and
Speaker 1: play the cards tight to our chest. But what would
Speaker 1: happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would
Speaker 1: cease to be a game of strategy and become a
Speaker 1: game of pure chain ants. We'd have to start playing
Speaker 1: life another way. It would be like chess, where you
Speaker 1: can see the opponents every move. But in all human
Speaker 1: history there has never been a social analog for chess.
Speaker 1: That's why Paul Wendell and his group had to be
Speaker 1: stopped for a while at least. But what could you
Speaker 1: have done with them? Asked the secretary. Imprison them, silarrowly,
Speaker 1: have them shot? What would you have done? The President's
Speaker 1: face became graver than ever. I had not yet made
Speaker 1: that decision. Thank Heaven, it has been taken out of
Speaker 1: my hands. One of his own men shot him. That's right,
Speaker 1: said the big fb eye man. We went into his
Speaker 1: apartment an instant too late. We found eight madmen in
Speaker 1: a near corpse. We're not sure what happened, and we're
Speaker 1: not sure we want to know. Anything that can drive
Speaker 1: eight reasonably stable men off the deep end in less
Speaker 1: than an hour is nothing to meddle around with. I
Speaker 1: wonder what went wrong, asked the secretary of No. One
Speaker 1: in particular, Scarce Presto. Paul Wendell, too was wondering what
Speaker 1: went wrong. Slowly, over a period of immeasurable time, memory
Speaker 1: seeped back into him. Bits of memory here and there,
Speaker 1: crept in from nowhere, sometimes to be lost again, sometimes
Speaker 1: to remain. Once, he found himself mentally humming an odd,
Speaker 1: rather funeral tune. Now, though you'd have said that the
Speaker 1: head was dead, for its owner, dead was he? It
Speaker 1: stood on its neck with a smile, well bred, and
Speaker 1: bowed three times to me. It was none of your
Speaker 1: impudent off hand nods. Wendell stopped and wondered what the
Speaker 1: devil seemed so important about the song. Slowly, slowly, memory returned.
Speaker 1: When he finally realized, with crashing finality, where he was
Speaker 1: and what had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane,
Speaker 1: or he would have if he could have become violent.
Speaker 1: March funebra lento. Open your mouth, Paul, said the pretty nurse.
Speaker 1: The hulking mass of not quite human gazed at her
Speaker 1: with vacuous eyes and opened its mouth dexterously. She spooned
Speaker 1: his mouthful of baby food into it. Now swallow it, Paul.
Speaker 1: That's it now another in pretty bad shape, isn't he.
Speaker 1: Nurse Peters turned to look at the man who had
Speaker 1: walked up behind her. It was doctor Benwick, the new intern.
Speaker 1: He's worthless to himself and any one else, she said.
Speaker 1: It's a shame too, he'd be rather nice looking if
Speaker 1: there were any personality behind that face. She shoveled another
Speaker 1: spoonful of mashed asparagus into the gaping mouth. Now swallow it, Paul.
Speaker 1: How long has he been here, Benwick asked, eyeing the
Speaker 1: scars that showed through the dark hair on the patient's head.
Speaker 1: Nearly six years. Miss Peters said, hum, but they outlawed
Speaker 1: lobotomies back in the sixties. Open your mouth, Paul. Then
Speaker 1: to Benwick, this was an accident, bullet in the head.
Speaker 1: You can see the scar on the other side of
Speaker 1: his head. The doctor moved around to look at the
Speaker 1: left temple. Doesn't leave much of a human being, does it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even leave much of an animal. Miss Peters said,
Speaker 1: he's alive. But that's the best you can say for him. Now, swallow, Paul.
Speaker 1: That's it. Even an amoeba can find food for itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even a single settle is better off than he is.
Speaker 1: Chop out a man's forebrain and he's nothing. It's a
Speaker 1: case of the whole being less than the sum of
Speaker 1: its parts. I'm glad they outlawed the operation on mental patients.
Speaker 1: Miss Peters said, with a note of disgust in her voice.
Speaker 1: Doctor Benwick said, it's worse than it looks. Do you
Speaker 1: know why the anti lobotomists managed to get the bill passed.
Speaker 1: Let's drink some milk, now, Paul, No, doctor, I was
Speaker 1: only a little girl at that time. It was a
Speaker 1: matter of electro encephalographic records. They showed that there was
Speaker 1: electrical activity in the prefrontal lobes even after the nerves
Speaker 1: had been severed, which could mean a lot lot of things,
Speaker 1: But the a L supporter said that it indicated that
Speaker 1: the forebrain was still capable of thinking. Miss Peters looked
Speaker 1: a little ill. Why that's horrible. I wish you'd never
Speaker 1: told me. She looked at the lump of vegetablized humans
Speaker 1: sitting placidly at the table. Do you suppose he's actually
Speaker 1: thinking somewhere deep inside? Oh? I doubt it, Benwick said hastily.
Speaker 1: There's probably no real self awareness, none at all. There
Speaker 1: couldn't be, I suppose not, Miss Peters said, But it's
Speaker 1: not pleasant to think of. That's why they outlawed it,
Speaker 1: said Benwick. Rondo Andante Manomboco. Insanity is a retreat from reality,
Speaker 1: an escape within the mind from the reality outside the mind.
Speaker 1: But what if there is no detectable reality outside the mind?
Speaker 1: What is there to escape from? Suicide? Death in any
Speaker 1: form is an escape from life. But if death does
Speaker 1: not come and cannot be self inflicted, what then? And
Speaker 1: when the pressure of nothingness becomes too great to bear
Speaker 1: it becomes necessary to escape. A man under great enough
Speaker 1: pressure will take the easy way out. But what if
Speaker 1: there is no easy way, Why then a man must
Speaker 1: take the hard way. For Paul Wendell, there was no
Speaker 1: escape from his dark, senseless gahenna by way of death,
Speaker 1: and even insanity offered no retreat. Insanity in itself is senseless,
Speaker 1: and senselessness was what he was trying to flee. The
Speaker 1: only insanity possible was a psychosis of regression, a fleeing
Speaker 1: into the past, into the crystallized, unchanging world of memory.
Speaker 1: So Paul Wendell explored his past every year, every hour,
Speaker 1: every second of it, searching to recall and savor every
Speaker 1: bit of sensation he had ever experienced. He tasted and smelled,
Speaker 1: and touched and heard and analyzed each of them minutely.
Speaker 1: He searched through his own subjective thought processes, analyzing, checking,
Speaker 1: and correlating them. Know thyself. Time and time again, Wendell
Speaker 1: retreated from his own memories in confusion or shame or fear,
Speaker 1: But there was no retreat from himself, and eventually he
Speaker 1: had to go back and look again. He had plenty
Speaker 1: of time, all the time in the world. How can
Speaker 1: subjective time be measured when there is no objective reality?
Speaker 1: Eventually there came the time when there was nothing left
Speaker 1: to look at, nothing left to see, nothing left to
Speaker 1: check and remember, nothing that he had not gone over
Speaker 1: in every detail. Again, boredom began to creep in. It
Speaker 1: was not the boredom of nothingness, but the boredom of
Speaker 1: the familiar imagination. What could he imagine except combinations and
Speaker 1: permutations of his own memories. He didn't know. Maybe there
Speaker 1: might be more to it than that, So he exercised
Speaker 1: his imagination. With a wealth of material to draw upon,
Speaker 1: he would build himself worlds where he could move around, walk,
Speaker 1: talk and make love, eat, drink, and feel the caress
Speaker 1: of sunshine and wind. It was while he was engaged
Speaker 1: in this project that he touched another mind. He touched it,
Speaker 1: fused for a blinding second, and bounced away. He ran,
Speaker 1: gibbering up and down the corridors of his own memory,
Speaker 1: mentally reeling from the shock of identification. Who was he?
Speaker 1: Paul Wendell? Yes, he knew with incontrovertible certainty that he
Speaker 1: was Paul Wendell. But he also knew with almost equal
Speaker 1: certainty that he was Captain Sir Richard Francis Purton. He
Speaker 1: was living, had lived in the latter half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. But he knew nothing of the captain other
Speaker 1: than the certainty of identity. Nothing else of that blinding
Speaker 1: mind touch remained. Again, he scoured his memory, Paul Wendell's memory,
Speaker 1: checking and rechecking the area just before that semi fatal
Speaker 1: bullet had crashed through his brain. And finally, at long last,
Speaker 1: he knew with certainty where his calculations had gone astray.
Speaker 1: He knew positively why eight men had gone insane. Then
Speaker 1: he went again in search of other mines, and this
Speaker 1: time he knew he would not bounce Kazi unifantasia poco
Speaker 1: andante pienis Simon. An old man sat quietly in his
Speaker 1: lawn chair, puffing contentedly on an expensive briar pipe and
Speaker 1: making corrections with a fountain pen on a thick sheaf
Speaker 1: of typwritten manuscript. Around him stretched an expanse of green lawn,
Speaker 1: dotted here and there with squat siecads that looked like
Speaker 1: overgrown pineapples. In the distance, screening the big house from
Speaker 1: the road, stood a row of stately palms, there fronds
Speaker 1: stirring lightly in the faint, warm California breeze. The old
Speaker 1: man raised his head as a car pulled into the
Speaker 1: curving driveway. The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped,
Speaker 1: and a man climbed out of the vehicle. He walked
Speaker 1: with easy strides across the grass to where the elderly
Speaker 1: gentleman sat. He was lithe of indeterminate age, but with
Speaker 1: a look of great determination. There was something in his
Speaker 1: face that made the old man vaguely uneasy. Not with fear,
Speaker 1: but with a sense of deep respect. What can I
Speaker 1: do for you, sir, I have some news for you,
Speaker 1: mister president, the younger one said. The old man smiled ryly.
Speaker 1: I haven't been president for fourteen years. Most people call
Speaker 1: me senator or just plain mister. The younger man smiled back,
Speaker 1: very well, Senator, my name is Camberton, James Camberton. I
Speaker 1: brought some information that may possibly relieve your mind, or
Speaker 1: again it may not. You sound ominous, mister Camberton. I
Speaker 1: hope you'll remember that I've been retired from the political
Speaker 1: field for nearly five years. What is this shattering news?
Speaker 1: Paul Wendell's body was buried yesterday. The senator looked blank
Speaker 1: for a second, then recognition came into his face. Wendell, eh,
Speaker 1: after all, this time, poor Chap, he'd have been better
Speaker 1: off if he'd died twenty years ago. Then he paused
Speaker 1: and looked up. But just who are you, mister camp
Speaker 1: And what makes you think I would be particularly interested
Speaker 1: in Paul Wendell. Mister Wendell wants to tell you that
Speaker 1: he is very grateful to you for having saved his life, Senator.
Speaker 1: If it hadn't been for your orders, he would have
Speaker 1: been left to die. The Senator felt strangely calm, although
Speaker 1: he knew he should feel shocked. That's ridiculous, sir. Mister
Speaker 1: Wendall's brain was hopelessly damaged. He never recovered his sanity
Speaker 1: or control of his body. I know. I used to
Speaker 1: drop over to see him occasionally, until I finally realized
Speaker 1: that I was only making myself feel worse and doing
Speaker 1: him no good. Yes, Sir, and mister Wendell wants you
Speaker 1: to know how much he appreciated those visits. The Senator
Speaker 1: grew red, What the devil are you talking about? I
Speaker 1: just said that Wendell couldn't talk. How could he have
Speaker 1: said anything to you? What do you know about this?
Speaker 1: I never said he spoke to me, Senator. He didn't.
Speaker 1: And as to what I know of this affair. Evidently
Speaker 1: you don't remember my name. James Camberton. The senator frowned.
Speaker 1: The name is familiar, but then his eyes went wide. Camberton,
Speaker 1: you were one of the ape men who Why you're
Speaker 1: the man who shot Wendell. Camberton pulled up an empty
Speaker 1: lawn chair and sat down. That's right, Senator, but there's
Speaker 1: nothing to be afraid of. Would you like to hear
Speaker 1: about it? I suppose I must. The old man's voice
Speaker 1: was so low that it was scarcely audible. Tell me
Speaker 1: were the other seven released? Two? Ha? Have you all
Speaker 1: regained your sanity? Do you remember? He stopped? Do we
Speaker 1: remember the extra sensory perception formula? Yes we do, all
Speaker 1: eight of us remember it well. It was based on
Speaker 1: faulty premises and incomplete, of course, but in its own
Speaker 1: way it was workable enough. We have something much better now.
Speaker 1: The old man shook his head slowly. I failed. Then,
Speaker 1: Such an idea is as fatal to society as we
Speaker 1: know it as a virus plague. I tried to keep
Speaker 1: you men quarantined, but I failed. After all those years
Speaker 1: of insanity, Now the chess game begins. The poker game
Speaker 1: is over. It's worse than that, Camberton said, chuckling softly.
Speaker 1: Or actually it's much better. I don't understand. Explain it
Speaker 1: to me. I'm an old man, and I may not
Speaker 1: live to see my world collapse. I hope I don't,
Speaker 1: Camberdon said, I'll try to explain in word, Senator, very inadequate,
Speaker 1: but a fuller explanation will come later, and he launched
Speaker 1: into the story of the two decade search of Paul Wendell,
Speaker 1: Coda Andantino telepathy time travel. After three hours of listening,
Speaker 1: the ex President was still not sure he understood. Think
Speaker 1: of it this way, Camberton said, Think of the mind
Speaker 1: at any given instant as being surrounded by a shield,
Speaker 1: a shield of privacy, a shield which you yourself have erected,
Speaker 1: though unconsciously. It's a perfect insulator against telepathic prying by others.
Speaker 1: You feel you have to have it in order to
Speaker 1: retain your privacy, your sense of identity. Even but here's
Speaker 1: the kicker. Even though no one else can get in,
Speaker 1: you can't get out. You can call this shield self consciousness.
Speaker 1: Perhaps shame is a better word. Every one has it
Speaker 1: to some degree. No telepathic thought can break through it. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: some people will relax it for a fraction of a second,
Speaker 1: but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up again. Then,
Speaker 1: how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?
Speaker 1: The senator looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into
Speaker 1: his briar. You don't go through it, you go around it. Now,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, that sounds like some of those fourth
Speaker 1: dimension stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger,
Speaker 1: I read a murder mystery, something about a morgue, I
Speaker 1: think it. At any rate, the murder was committed inside
Speaker 1: a locked room. No one could possibly have gotten in
Speaker 1: or out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer
Speaker 1: traveled through the fourth dimension in order to get at
Speaker 1: the victim. He didn't go through the walls, he went
Speaker 1: around them. The Senator puffed a match flame into the
Speaker 1: bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're driving at? Exactly? Agreed Pemberton. The
Speaker 1: fourth dimension time you must go back in time to
Speaker 1: an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant
Speaker 1: has no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world.
Speaker 1: You must travel back down your own four dimensional tube
Speaker 1: of memory in order to get outside it. And to
Speaker 1: do that you have to know your own mind completely,
Speaker 1: and you must be sure you know it. For only
Speaker 1: if you know your own mind can you communicate with
Speaker 1: another mind, Because at the instant of contact you become
Speaker 1: that person. You must enter his own memory at the
Speaker 1: beginning and go up the hypertube. You will have all
Speaker 1: his memories, his hopes, his fears, his sense of identity.
Speaker 1: Unless you know, beyond any trace of doubt, who you are,
Speaker 1: the result is insanity. The senator puffed his pipe for
Speaker 1: a moment, then shook his head. It sounds like oriental
Speaker 1: mysticism to me. If you can travel in time, you'd
Speaker 1: be able to change the past. Not at all, Camberton said,
Speaker 1: that's like saying that if you read a book, the
Speaker 1: author's words will change time. Isn't like that. Look, suppose
Speaker 1: you had a long trough filled with super cooled water.
Speaker 1: At one end, you drop in a piece of ice.
Speaker 1: Immediately the water begins to freeze. The crystallization front moves
Speaker 1: toward the other end of the trough. Behind that front
Speaker 1: there is ice, frozen, immovable, unchangeable. Ahead of it, there
Speaker 1: is water fluid, mobile, changeable. The instant we call the
Speaker 1: present is like that crystallization front. The past is unchangeable.
Speaker 1: The future is flexible. But they both exist. I see,
Speaker 1: at least I think I do, and you cannot do
Speaker 1: all this, not yet, said Camberton, not completely. My mind
Speaker 1: isn't as strong as Wendell's, nor as capable. I'm not
Speaker 1: the shall we say, the superman he is. Perhaps I
Speaker 1: never will be, But I'm learning. I'm learning. After all,
Speaker 1: it took Paul twenty years to do the trick under
Speaker 1: the most favorable circumstances imaginable. I see. The Senator smoked
Speaker 1: his pipe in silence for a long time. Camberton lit
Speaker 1: a cigarette and said nothing. After a time, the Senator
Speaker 1: took the briar from his mouth and began to tap
Speaker 1: the bowl gently on the heel of his palm. Mister Camberton,
Speaker 1: why do you tell me all this? I still have
Speaker 1: influence with the Senate. The present president is a protegee
Speaker 1: of mine. It wouldn't be too difficult to get you
Speaker 1: men put away again. I have no desire to see
Speaker 1: our society ruined, our world destroyed. Why do you tell me?
Speaker 1: Camberton smiled, apologetically. I'm afraid you might find it a
Speaker 1: little difficult to put us away again, sir, but that's
Speaker 1: not the point. You see, we need you. We have
Speaker 1: no desire to destroy our present culture until we've designed
Speaker 1: a better one to replace it. You are one of
Speaker 1: the greatest living statesmen, Senator. You have a wealth of
Speaker 1: knowledge and ability that can never be replaced, knowledge and
Speaker 1: ability that will help us to design a culture and
Speaker 1: a civilization that will be as far above this one
Speaker 1: as this one is above the wolf pack. We want
Speaker 1: you to come in with us, help us. We want
Speaker 1: you to be one of us. I I am an
Speaker 1: old man, mister Camberton, I will be dead before this
Speaker 1: civilization falls. How can I help build a new one?
Speaker 1: And how could I, at my age be expected to
Speaker 1: learn this technique? Paul Wendell says you can. He says
Speaker 1: you have one of the strongest minds now existing. The
Speaker 1: Senator put his pipe in his jacket pocket. You know, Camberton,
Speaker 1: you keep referring to Wendell in the present tense. I
Speaker 1: thought you said he was dead again. Camberton gave him
Speaker 1: the odd smile. I didn't say that, Senator, I said
Speaker 1: they buried his body that's quite a different thing. You see.
Speaker 1: Before the poor useless hulk that held his blasted brain died,
Speaker 1: Paul gave the aid of us his memories. He gave
Speaker 1: us himself. The mind is not the brain, Senator. We
Speaker 1: don't know what it is yet, but we do know
Speaker 1: what it isn't Paul's poor damaged brain is dead, but
Speaker 1: his memories, his thought processes, the very essence of all
Speaker 1: that was Paul Wendell is still very much with us.
Speaker 1: Do you begin to see now why we want you
Speaker 1: to come in with us? There are nine of us now,
Speaker 1: but we need the tenth. You will you come? I Ah,
Speaker 1: I'll have to think it over, the old statesman said,
Speaker 1: in a voice that had a faint quaver. I'll have
Speaker 1: to think it over. But they both knew what his
Speaker 1: answer would be. And of Sweet Mental by Randall Garrett,
Speaker 1: recording by Julie Carter