Macroscope

CHAPTER 3

A persistent rapping at the door brought Ivo out of an uncomfortable sleep. He was not used to the hammock, and the shock of what had happened was too fresh and raw. He had not forgotten that he occupied the apartment of a man whose mind was virtually dead; he felt like an intruder.

He righted himself and stumbled across the compartment. He crashed open the sliding door, rubbing his eyes.

Afra stood there, lovely in bathrobe and slippers. Her sunburst hair was tied under a nebulous kerchief, up and back in the manner of a busy housewife, and she wore no makeup, but to Ivo she was dazzling.

Her blue gaze smote him. “Special delivery,” she said without humor. “Telegram.” She held out an envelope.

Ivo accepted it, then became abruptly aware of his condition. He was standing before this beautiful girl in sleep-rumpled jockey shorts. “I — thanks. Must change.”

She put her hand against the door, preventing closure. “Is it yours?”

He looked at the address. It was a stylized representation of an arrow. Nothing else.

“Now that just might signify entropy,” she said, stepping forward and so forcing him to jump back. “Time’s Arrow, as it were. But I remembered that your first name, Ivo, is a variant of the Teutonic Ivon, meaning a military archer. And your last name—”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, ill at ease. If only he had something on!

“The feminine form would be Yvonne,” she continued blithely, pushing him back another step. “Names always derive from something interesting. Mine means ‘A greeter of people’ — Teutonic, again.”

He looked at her more carefully, suspicious of this brightness. Neither her voice nor her expression betrayed it at this moment, but he knew she was crazy with grief for Brad. Her eyes were shadowed and there was a mild odor of perspiration about her. Was she afraid to be alone, or did Brad’s room have a perverse attraction for her?

“But I suppose you’d better read it, just to be sure,” she said. “I found it beside the teletyper. The operator was asleep — very bad form, you know — so I took it…”

She was disturbed, all right. She must have been pacing from area to area, talking with anyone, grasping at any pretext to distract her attention from the horror in her memory. She cared nothing about Ivo Archer or his clothing; for the narrow present, the telegram was necessarily tantalizing.

He opened it while she whirled about the room, touching her hands to Brad’s things but not moving them. She glanced eagerly toward the message.

One word jumped out at him. Ivo crumpled the paper angrily.

“What are you doing! We’re not even sure it’s yours!”

“It’s mine.”

“What does it say? You can’t just—”

“I don’t know what it says. Just that it means trouble.”

“At least let me—”

“Sure,” he said, too curtly, and flipped the ball of paper at her. “I have to dress.”

She was oblivious to the hint. She spread out the sheet and concentrated on it while he turned his back and climbed hastily into trousers and shirt.

“Why — this is polyglot!” she exclaimed. “I thought you said you couldn’t—”

“I can’t.”

She glided to the little table and set down the message. “Who would send you a note like this? It’s fascinating!”

“It’s trouble,” he repeated. He came over to look at it again, actually only wanting to be near her.

The printing was plain enough: SURULLINEN XPACT SCHON AG I ENCAJE.

There was no signature.

“What a mishmash!” she said, producing a pencil. “I’m not sure I can put it all together, but I know it means something. If only Brad—”

She dropped her head, realizing, and he saw the dry sobs shake her shoulders. Then she lifted her face determinedly and refocused on the message. Ivo stood by, doing nothing, longing for the right only to touch her in comfort — and feeling guilty for that desire. What a girl she was!

“Schön — that’s German, of course. It—” She stopped again. “Schön! Brad’s friend from the project! You were supposed to take this to Brad for translation.”

“Could be.” He wondered whether he should have destroyed the note instead of letting her have it. She didn’t come close to Brad in intelligence, but she was not exactly slow.

“Schön — he’s the one who — if anybody can—”

Ivo grimaced behind his face, knowing that she was grasping at straws and would soon realize it. Even Schön could hardly regenerate his friend’s damaged brain tissue. That had to be accomplished internally, and such healing did not take place in the higher animals.

“I must know what it says. Then we can answer it…” She bent to the task with renewed vigor. The kerchief bobbed as her head nodded. “That last word — ENCAJE — that’s Spanish for ‘lace.’ And the next to last — I — could be English. It would be just like Brad to slip in a ‘straight’ term, and I understand Schön is even worse that way.” She filled in the English equivalents beneath the printed terms while Ivo watched, intrigued in spite of himself. He had never envied the geniuses their polylingual facility, but working on the message vicariously through Afra’s ability he could imagine himself caught up in the excitement of the chase. A search for a word could be as exciting as a manhunt, in the proper circumstance, he decided.

Even though he already knew the outcome.

“XPACT — that’s no Romance-language word, or Germanic,” she murmured. “Or Finno-Ugric… of course! It’s in the Slavic group. Russian… no — well, it’s related. Let’s see.” She rewrote the word in more exotic script.

She looked up, her blue eyes startlingly intense. Ivo wondered how it was that he had never appreciated the luster of such color before he had met her. “Acorn, I make it. Does that make sense?”

Ivo shrugged.

“And SURULLINEN — that’s Finnish for ‘sad.’ One word left… I think it’s Turkish… ‘mesh,’ perhaps.” She sat back and read it off: “ ‘Sad acorns, beautiful mesh I lace.’ ”

Ivo chuckled, and she made a fleeting smile. “But that ‘lace’ is a noun,” she said, “so we don’t have it yet. No verb in it — it can’t be a sentence — not as we think of it. And that ‘I’ doesn’t really fit — aha! That could be the Polish ‘and.’ ‘Beautiful mesh and lace’ contrasted with the miserable acorns.” She worried it some more, tongue appearing and disappearing between even white teeth.

What if she solved it? he wondered. Should he tell her the truth now, try to explain? That didn’t seem wise.

He saw her enthusiasm for the problem and decided to leave it with her a little longer.

“Gloomy oak, lovely plait and lace,” she said at last. “Something in that vein. I can’t take the words any farther, and I don’t know where to begin interpretation. God, I’m tired! Why would he go to the trouble of sending such a message to you?”

“Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven.” Ivo said.

She was on it immediately. “It does mean something to you. A line of poetry?”

“Yes.” She was too sharp; he had said too much.

“A work you’re both familiar with? Something you can quote from? Something that suggests the course you should follow?”

“Yes.” He knew she was about to ask which poet or which poem, and he was not ready to tell. She would identify it anyway, or… or what kind of persuasion would she turn on him?

“Now I can rest,” she said. She shuffled to the hammock and flopped upon it, her knees brought up to one side, letting her slippers droop and fall to the floor.

She had forgotten where she was — or didn’t care. Perhaps, he thought with unreasonable jealousy, she was used to sleeping here. In Brad’s room.

He looked at her, at the soft hair breaking free of the twisted kerchief, at the slender arm falling over the edge of the hammock and swaying as it rocked; at the embraceable shape of her curled body, the smooth white knees exposed, the firm round ankles and small feet. He felt ashamed for his yearnings.

Afra was the epitome of the feminine adorable, by Ivo’s present definition. It did not matter that the definition followed the fact, rather than the other way around. He had schooled himself not to resent more alert intelligence than his own, but also not to expect it in the girl he might marry. Not to require supreme beauty, not to dwell on small character defects… a hundred little cautions, in the interests of probability and practicality. He was not an extraordinary man, apart from that one unique aspect that negated any purpose he might have had in life, and it was not to be anticipated that he would win an extraordinary woman. Any woman, really.

He knew now that he had disastrously underrated his susceptibility to sheer physical beauty. He had loved Afra the moment he saw her, before he knew anything fundamental about her. Vanquished, he could only hope for compassionate terms.

“I thought nothing could hurt me again,” she murmured sleepily into the small pillow-cushion, “after I lost my father. But now Brad — almost the same way, really…”

Ivo did not speak, knowing that no reply was wanted. She was oblivious to him, her mind encapsulated within an isolated episode juggled to the surface by misery. The news surprised him, however; there had been no prior hint of tragedy in her background. Her father must have died, or lost his sanity suddenly, so that she spoke of him only under extreme stress. Now it had happened to Brad. He made a mental note never to mention the subject of parents to her.

“And he told me how to — I can’t remember — something else about Schön…”

Suddenly it had become relevant to himself. “He” had to mean Brad. What had Brad told her about Schön? Ivo listened tensely, but she had drifted into silence. Her eyes were closed, tears on the lashes.

Brad’s girl…

Ivo let himself out, leaving because it hurt him to watch her. He grieved for Brad too, but it was not the same.

He made his way to the infirmary.

Six figures occupied the chairs. It was as though they never moved from them, for this was station night.

“Hello, Dr. Johnson,” he murmured as he passed. The patriarch stared past him. “Hello, Dr. Smith. Dr. Sung. Mr. Holt. Dr. Carpenter.”

The male nurse appeared, yawning. “What do you want?”

Ivo continued to watch Bradley Carpenter, mercifully asleep. Merciful for the observer, for his friend no longer had the intellect to care what had happened to him.

Why had Brad done it, knowing the penalty he would pay? It had been an act of suicide; he could have fended off the Senator’s demand, had he chosen to. A subpoena would have entailed substantial publicity, but would still have been a far smaller evil. This death was more horrible because it was partial. The mind was gone, lobotomized, while the flaccid body remained, a lifetime burden to society and torment to those who had known and loved Brad in his entirety.

“Oh — you were his Earthside friend,” the nurse said, recognizing him. “Too bad.”

Brad woke. The lax features quivered; the eyes fought into focus. The lips pursed loosely. Almost, some animation came into the face.

“Sh-sh-sh…” Brad said.

The nurse placed a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “It’s all right, Dr. Carpenter. All right. Relax. Relax.” Aside, to Ivo: “It isn’t good to work them up. They may be capable of some regeneration of personality, if the condition isn’t aggravated. We just don’t know yet, and can’t take any chances. You understand. You’d better go.”

Brad’s eyes fixed with difficulty on Ivo. “Sh-sh—”

“Schön,” Ivo said.

The straining body relaxed.

The nurse’s brow wrinkled. “What did you say?”

“It’s German,” Ivo explained unhelpfully.

“He was trying to — that’s astonishing! It’s only been a few hours since—”

“It meant a lot to him.”

Brad was asleep again, his ultimate accomplished. “The others couldn’t even try for several days,” the nurse said. “He can’t have been hit as bad. Maybe he’ll recover!”

“Maybe.” Ivo walked away, sure that the hope was futile. Only a transcendent effort, perhaps the only one he would ever be capable of, had brought forth that word, or that attempt at the word. It was clear now, in awful retrospect: Brad had sacrificed himself in an effort to force the summoning of Schön. He had been that certain that only Schön could nullify the destroyer and handle the problem of the macroscope.

It had been for nothing. How could he introduce Schön to this tremendous source of knowledge and power — knowing how much worse the world would be, if Schön’s amoral omnipotence replaced the Senator’s ambition? He could not do it.

He met Groton in the hallway near the common room. “Ivo,” the man said, stopping him. “I know this is a bad time for you, but there is some information I need.”

“No worse than any other time.” The truth was that he was relieved for some pretext to take his mind off the present disaster. He knew now that Groton was not an obtuse engineer; the man had important feelings about important things, as the school-teaching narration had shown. It was always dangerous to be guided by prejudice, as he saw himself to have been guided at his first meeting with Groton. “What kind of information? I don’t know much.”

“I’ve been working on your horoscope — couldn’t sleep right now — and, well, it would help if you could describe certain crises in your life.”

So Groton, too, felt it. Every person had his own ways of reacting to stress. No doubt astrology was as good a diversion as any.

“Like this crisis? I’m not objective yet.” Did he really want to contribute further to this exercise? Still, what he had just reminded himself about prejudice should hold for this too. The fact that Ivo Archer found astrology unworthy of serious consideration did not mean that discourtesy was justified; Harold Groton obviously was sincere. There were stranger hobbies.

“I was thinking of your past experience. Perhaps during your childhood something happened that changed your life—”

“I thought your charts told you all that, from the birth date.” Or was that an unkind remark?

“Not exactly. It is better to obtain corroborative experience. Then we can understand the signals more precisely. Astrology is a highly confirmatory science. We apply the scientific method, really.”

“And some philosophy?” Ivo inquired, thinking of the Senator’s remarks in that connection.

“Of course. So if you—”

They entered Groton’s apartment. Ivo could smell breakfast cooking and knew that Beatryx was at work. It made him feel obscurely homesick; nobody ever took institutionalized food if they could help it, though that served in the station was exceptionally good.

“I had no childhood,” he said.

“You mean the project. A controlled situation, certainly, and perhaps undistinctive. But after you left—”

Ivo remembered the turning point. Perhaps it had begun, if it could be said to have had a beginning, the day he was twenty-three. February third, 1865. The day he admitted to himself that he had consumption.

Point Lookout, Maryland — as horrible a place as any he could imagine. Surely this was Hell, and Major Brady the devil. Twenty acres of barren land surrounded by palisades. The prisoners were Southern White; many of the guards were Black. The Negroes took pleasure insulting and torturing any people they chose, but the cold of winter was worse yet. There was not enough food, clothing or sanitation, and no medical facilities for the prisoners. The water was foul. The only shelter was the collection of A-tents and Bell-tents. They slept on the bare, damp ground, denied both planks and straw for bedding, and no wood was permitted inside the compound for any fire. Objection of any nature to these conditions brought infamous retaliatory measures and further reduction of the scant rations.

He shared a tent with a dozen men. While the crowding provided a certain blessed amount of bodily warmth, it also spread disease at a savage rate. Diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid fever, scurvy and the itch… fifteen to twenty men died every day. And now he could no longer deny the tubercular coughing and the wastage of his own body. He realized he was dying.

Had it been only four years ago that the great state of Georgia voted secession from the Union? He had not at first been a secessionist, but the vote had been held at Milledgeville, only two miles from where he eked out his living by tutoring. The sentiment, like disease, had been highly contagious; even the clergy were belligerently patriotic. The afflatus of war was breathed upon them all. Somehow he had become convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees, singlehanded; indeed, any stalwart Georgian could!

Now he looked about him at the human desolation of Point Lookout. “What fools we were!” he whispered. The conceit of an individual was ridiculous because it was powerless, but the conceit of a whole people was a terrible thing.

Flushed with patriotic illusion, he had volunteered to fight. He, whose only skill was musical!

It had not all been hard. He remembered fondly the time he, a bedraggled soldier, had passed beneath the windows where a local Philharmonic Club was rehearsing. He had taken out his flute and played there in the street — and the orchestra ceased rehearsal, listened, and arranged to grant him honorary freedom of the town!

During furlough there had been concerts with friends, and of course the ladies! He was always in love, and never ashamed to win fair hearts by the music of his flute.

He had smuggled that flute into the prison camp, and its music now was one of the few comforts he had. It had been the one thing he refused to part with, when the Lucy was captured in the Gulf Stream, running the Yankee blockade. He, as Signal Officer, had refused to declare himself to be an Englishman, preferring capture to a dishonorable escape.

Today he was dying of that decision, as his nation was dying of the Union armies. Somehow, until today, he had had hope. Was not God just?

Harold Groton was waiting for his answer. What could he tell the man?

“It’s very hard to define. I came near death when I was twenty-three. Is that what you want?”

“If it affected you deeply, yes. Some people nearly die and are hardly concerned, while others are profoundly moved by an innocent remark. It isn’t the event so much as its personal importance to you.”

“It is important to me. I was sick and in — prison. Some friends — put up bail. On the ship home—”

“You weren’t in America?”

“Not exactly. The ship I was on was frozen in the ice for three days on the way to City Port, Virginia.”

Groton refrained from commenting.

Was it worth the effort to make the man understand? For the sake of accurate data for the pseudo-science of astrology? Ivo remained distracted by his grief, and could not bring himself to care.

Three days icebound, early March, 1865. He and the other repatriated prisoners huddled in the hull, shuddering with the cold. The end for him was very near.

Another prisoner practiced on the flute. A little girl, daughter of a passenger above, heard it and marveled at the melody. “If you think I’m good, you should hear that other fellow play!” the man told her. “But he’s not going to last long, in this cold.”

She reported the episode to her mother. “I know only one person that skilled with the flute,” the woman said. “An old friend of mine. Surely he could not be here!”

But she investigated, nagged by the possibility — and found him there in the hold, wrapped in an old soiled quilt, eyes staring, wasted body subject to spasms of pain. She knew her friend.

It was so crowded in the hold that they had to pass him over the heads of the other prisoners to get him out. She plied him with brandy, but he was too far gone to swallow.

She warmed him and ministered to him, she and her little girl. By midnight he revived somewhat. She presented him with his flute — the best medicine! — and weakly he began to play.

The prisoners below yelled for joy as they heard the sound of it. He was going to recover!

“That act of friendship — I think that was the turning point,” Ivo said. “I surely would have died, otherwise.”

Groton shook his head. “It is a strange story you tell, Ivo. But as I said, its validity lies chiefly in its importance to you, not in the overt details. I’ll apply it to my researches.”

Ivo, nervous again, declined to share breakfast with the Grotons and found his way to the mess hall. He was not very hungry.

It was still early, by the station’s day, when he finished, and he continued to be restless. Was Afra still sleeping in his — Brad’s — room? Should he go back yet?

He stopped off at the latrine — and realized suddenly that every toilet faced in the same direction. The arrangement was such that when a person sat, he had to face the “forward” orientation of the torus.

“When you take your inevitable bow, your stern is sternward.” he said aloud, finally appreciating Brad’s pun — a pun inflicted upon the nomenclature of the entire station.

He blinked, feeling his eyes moisten with the pathos. Bradley Carpenter, PhD in assorted space technologies at age twenty-two — straining with all that remained of his mind at twenty-five to utter one German word…

Brad — pride of the nameless project the participants had mischievously dubbed “The Pecker Experiment.” It had been patterned after, or at least inspired by, a much better known effort antedating it by twenty years: The Peckham Experiment. But if the good doctors of Peckham had suspected what sinister offshoots their well-meant research would spawn, they might have had severe misgivings.

A certain British medical group, as Ivo understood it, had set out in the nineteen thirties to ascertain the nature of health. It had seemed to them that the medical profession’s attention to illness was mistaken; how much better it would be to take the steps necessary to preserve health, so that tedious and only partially effective remedial measures became unnecessary. A regular, complete physical checkup for everyone, the basic unit of attention being not the individual but the family. But would the average family respond favorably to such a service?

The center established in Peckham in 1935 soon demonstrated that they would. For several years many of the families within a radius of a mile had participated, enjoying a sensation of well-being they had never known before. Astonishingly, the records showed that ninety percent of the participants — presumed to be a representative cross-section of the nation — were not in good health at the time of application. The “normal” person was an ill person.

What might group life be like if ninety percent were healthy? The Peckham Experiment had offered only tantalizing glimpses. The Second World War, that trauma of the sick society, had cut it short. A postwar reorganization had expired for lack of financial backing, and the bold experiment was over.

But not forgotten. It was a topic for informed conjecture for many years thereafter. Certain persons studied the implications of the experiment and drew forth an intriguing supposition. If the average person were sick, and “normal” were in fact subnormal, so that he never comprehended his true physical potential — what of his mental potential? Could it be that health and proper upbringing might convert the average into superior, and the superior into genius?

What benefits might derive from genius cultured artificially? What would industry pay for employees of guaranteed IQ? How might the nation benefit? Just how high was the limit?

Certain private interests decided to speculate. Money appeared, and preliminary researches commenced. What might be the elements of a suitable upbringing for genius-on-tap? What was the best stock for production? As beef, not contented cows, was the object of ranching, so IQ, not conventionality, was to be the object of this project.

Studies performed in the interim since Peckham suggested astonishing facts. Heredity was vital, yes — but so was environment, in ways more devious and wonderful than suspected before. Health was essential — but so was education. The basic theory and practice of conventional schooling was long overdue for revolution.

Item: The expectation of the supervisor affected the performance of the subject. Thus American “self-fulfilling prophecies” resulted in lower grades for Negro and Indian schoolchildren, higher grades for Whites of prominent families — regardless of merit by objective standards.

Item: There was no correlation between school performance and life achievement. There was no practical advantage in additional years of schooling or the possession of diplomas apart from the self-fulfilling prophecy of society.

Item: Whatever was useful in the current eight-year introductory scholastic curriculum could be effectively mastered by a normal twelve-year-old child in four months — who would pick up most of it without formal instruction.

Item: The true “creative” child tended to be skeptical, independent, assertive, and had a wide range of interests: a natural maker of waves. He was, by normal definition, not a “good” student.

Item: In the human child, the brain achieved eighty percent of its adult weight by the age of three years, compared to a body weight of twenty percent. Any retardation occurring in this period became permanent.

Item: Creatures — of any species — raised in the dark developed no rods and cones in the eyes, and thus were blind for life. Creatures — of any species — raised in a restrictive, nonstimulating environment never developed their full “normal” mental or emotional capacities, and thus were dull for life. Physical infection, malnutrition, and sensory and cultural deprivation actually created inferior specimens.

Item: It was theoretically possible to raise the IQ of the average child by thirty points or more — merely by providing suitable equipment and information and permitting free rein for normal initiative. The child, thus encouraged, would fulfill a greater proportion of his natural potential — a fulfillment denied to his contemporaries.

Thus the project. All over the world, money was spent lavishly to locate potential genius stock and fatten it into complete health and vigor, that it might produce outstanding offspring. The offcolor nickname stemmed from conjecture how this had been accomplished. Virile, intelligent men of every race mated to women not their spouses, women at the peak of health, both parties paid liberally for their service. Tour of duty perhaps two years; illness, hunger or reproductive laxity frowned upon.

The babies had never known their biological parents. They had been removed from their various locales of production and committed to the maximum-security grounds of the project, there to be subjected to the most healthful and stimulating environment envisioned by man. Their individual families were replaced by something better: the group family. The adult staff, male and female, was trained to withhold nothing from any child except freedom to leave the project, and never to interfere needlessly in juvenile matters.

The results, as the years progressed, were generally disappointing. After phenomenal early growth, the average project child settled into bright but not exceptional mentality, and became, relative to expectations, moderately talented. It was as though this vast effort had succeeded largely in accelerating the rate of growth, but not the ultimate achievement. The children spread out in the normal bell-shaped curve, centered on IQ 125 — a result that would have been predicated on heredity alone, without the benefit of the improved environment. Only one true genius showed up on the tests, though there were a number of very intelligent children too — and as many who were average (IQ 100) or slightly below.

Officially, then, the project was a failure. Something evidently had been overlooked. There would be no assembly-line genius to market. The financial backing dwindled. After fifteen years it had to be disbanded and the subjects set free.

The officials had not known about Schön.

A group of men were seated in the common room, silent and somber. They looked up as he approached, their faces impassive.

“Please — a private meeting,” one said.

“Sorry.” Ivo passed quickly to the far door, not wanting to intrude. The “night” shift was barely over; why had they gathered at this time, almost surreptitiously? What were they doing, so privately? None of his business.

Harold Groton was coming down the hall from the other direction, full from his own breakfast. “There’s some kind of meeting,” Ivo advised him. “Exclusive. I ran afoul of it already, in the common room.”

“I know. I was just—” Groton paused, catching at Ivo’s arm. “By God! I just realized — you saw the destroyer and survived!”

“I fell below its critical limit, it would seem.”

“Afra says you know someone important — someone who can untangle this mess.”

“Afra says too much.” Ivo jerked his arm away, fed up with irrelevancies.

“That trick with the game — the intuitive calculation. Was Brad serious? Can you win every time?”

“Yes, if it’s the right type, and if I have the choice of openings.” What was he getting at? A Senator was dead, six other minds had been blasted by an alien destruction signal, and organizational chaos was incipient. Yet Groton, who had seemed yesterday to have some depth of feeling, concerned himself first with astrology and then with a superficial game!

“Come on — I’ll yield my slot to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No time to explain. We’re late already.” Groton pulled him back toward the common room.

Ivo shrugged and went along.

The still figures looked up again as they entered. Some were women, he saw now; he had not looked carefully before. “This is Ivo,” Groton said. “He was Dr. Carpenter’s friend. Therefore he has the privilege, and I am giving him my seat in the tourney.”

Tourney?

The others exchanged glances and shrugs. They did not appear pleased, but Groton evidently had the right of it.

“I can’t stay,” Groton said to him. “There’s no kibitzing. Play seriously. Good luck.” He was gone.

Ivo looked about. There were eight men and two women, of diverse nationalities. He recognized among them the big Russian who had smiled disdainfully at the Senator, and Fred Blank, ubiquitous maintenance man. This was not, then, an astronomy discussion, though the ranking scientists of the station appeared to be represented.

Three tables had been set end to end to form one long narrow panel. Upon it was a collection of colored crayons.

They arranged themselves at this counter, five on a side, facing each other in pairs. There was no chair for Ivo.

He stood there awkwardly, until one man rose and guided him to a separate table placed against the wall. It was the Russian who evidently recognized him, too. He planted Ivo before a chair facing toward the wall.

The meaning of two firmly spoken directives in Russian was clear. Ivo sat down and kept quiet.

The Russian nodded and returned to the main table.

There was a rustle of movement, then silence. Ivo stared at the wall — which was, he realized with a shock, covered with graffiti in many languages — and waited.

His imagination began percolating.

This? Having failed at science, the leaders of this space-borne project were turning to magic. They were a cabal holding a séance, a black mass, a conjuration… and all they had lacked, until this moment, was an innocent lamb for the blood sacrifice. The nether god had to be propitiated. First the secret rites had to be performed, the voodoo chanting, the knife ritually honed…

A few minutes passed. A stir commenced. Chairs shifted. Ivo’s back prickled. The sacrificial blade—

Someone approached his table.

— lifted high by the muscular priest—

And touched his shoulder.

Ivo stood up, and the man took his place.

The others had resettled themselves. One seat was now empty. Ivo marched over and took it.

Opposite him was the older of the two women, and between them were red and blue crayons. That was all.

Down the length of the table the four other pairs sat, each with similar apparatus. In uncanny silence, hands selected crayons, made obscure markings on the glossy surface of the table.

The woman facing him picked up the blue crayon and carefully printed eight dots on the counter in a rough heart-outline:

Ivo glanced at this in perplexity, not knowing what was expected of him. He looked sidelong at the couple’s paper to the left — and caught on.

They were playing sprouts!

He had, with typical perspicacity, missed the obvious. Groton had even mentioned the game as he dragged him to the common room.

He reached for the other crayon, but the woman set her hand on his, preventing him from lifting it. Apparently she had selected the color as well as the number of dots. He let go, and she handed him the blue.

It was his opening move, then. He had to play the eight-spot game of sprouts with this woman — was she South American? He’d know if she spoke — and defeat her. Groton said so.

He concentrated, trying to figure the forced win, but could not be certain. There were too many complex interrelationships, and too much depended upon the confluence of opposing lines of strategy.

He decided to keep it simple until the outcome was fathomable. The probability was that he would see the correct strategy before she could. He connected the southward-pointing dots, bisecting the heart, and placed the new spot in the center.

She recovered the crayon and made a butterfly-shape looping from the top, encircling the two highest dots. She placed the new one in the crevice.

Idle play, or artistry? Did it matter? Ivo decided that it did not, and proceeded with an asymmetric offshoot.

The woman continued without objection, and he knew that it was all right. These games were not being judged on esthetics. Soon he was able to determine the win, and played through to it without difficulty.

The others finished about the time he did, and again there was the shuffle as all stood up, wiped away the evidence, and moved one step around the table. The travel was clockwise; the woman he had defeated went out to the supernumerary chair and sat there, while the spare man came to occupy Ivo’s last seat. Now this was clear, too: with five facing five and one to carry, each rotation brought about new combinations that would not repeat until each person had played every other.

It was indeed a tourney.

His next opponent was a venerable gentleman bearing the emblem of Nove-Congo. Ivo judged him to be of Bantu stock with a strong Alpine admixture; the skin was an intermediate brown, the body stocky but lacking the Caucasoid hairiness. The turbulent history of his country was reflected in his genetic heritage, and Ivo felt sympathy. Ivo was himself a controlled conglomeration of Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid, as had been every member of the project, and he felt that the purebreds were lacking in something. But he had obtained his chromosomes the easy way, and had lived protected and pampered. This man could have been conceived only in misfortune, amidst violent antipathies against miscegenation; perhaps he was the child of rape. Yet he had won his way to the foremost circle of modern technology, and that too spoke eloquently about him.

The NoCon picked up the blue crayon and planted nine dots upon the board — and to Ivo it seemed as though they formed a crude map of his nation. Conscious, unconscious, or strictly in the eye of the beholder?

Irrelevant. Ivo played, this time observing that the players on the opposite side of the table invariably selected color and dot-pattern. Those on his side had choice of moves — and sometimes declined to make the opening one. As in football: one side chose the field, the other had the initiative. He would get to set up the spots once he progressed to the proper side.

He noted also that no game began with less than six spots; these people were aware of the extent of the advantage accruing to the person with the choice of moves, in the lower ranges. In the higher numbers, skill really did become the dominant factor, since nobody could anticipate or execute the forced win.

He won again without undue difficulty. These people, skilled as they might be in other types of endeavor, and practiced as they might be at sprouts, nevertheless lacked his own intuitive analytic faculty. Probably any of them could outperform him in almost any field — except this one. A billiards tournament, or table-tennis… but this happened to be sprouts, a game of semimathematical analysis. He was able to determine the winning strategy several moves before they could, and to have the victory in hand before they were aware. The real test of his skill was in determining the win, rather than in the play.

Groton had known of his power in this respect; that he had, in effect, an unfair advantage. Why had Groton chosen to send him into this contest? What was there to be won, that had to be won this way?

Should he arrange to lose?

No. It was not in him to throw a contest, any contest, for any reason. He could decline the prize, but he had to do his best in the competition.

The third encounter was with the Russian. The man picked up the red crayon and made seven dots.

Ivo strained, but could not quite pin down the automatic win. Seven was just beyond his intuitive competence. The opening move seemed wrong, however, so he declined it, brushing away the proffered crayon as though it were a tip refused.

The Russian nodded and accepted the onus. They played, and very shortly Ivo lined it up and established his winning mode.

The Russian paused instead of playing, after the key move, hairy brow wrinkled. “Misère?” he inquired. It was the first word spoken since the games had begun.

Ivo shrugged, wondering why the man did not make his play. Was he conceding already?

The Russian touched the shoulder of the woman next to him. She was, Ivo perceived, a younger person, perhaps no more than thirty-five, and the pride of her femininity was still about her. She was classic Mongoloid: stocky, flattish face, almond eyes, coarse straight hair and very small hands. She probably had come from Fringe-China, and was in her way as definitive a specimen as Afra was in hers. He was as closely related to this woman as to Afra: about one-third overlap of race.

The Russian asked Ivo something, when the woman’s attention had been gained. Then, again: “Misère.”

“He inquires whether you understand that it is misère,” she said softly to Ivo. “The red — to avoid the last move.”

To play to lose! That was the significance of the color. Red, naturally, for the deficit game. He had missed — yet again! — the obvious, while concentrating upon the subtle. And he had already forced the win — for the Russian, unless the man should make a mistake. That, in view of this interchange, seemed unlikely.

He had made an error — in not acquainting himself with the complete rules of play. He should have questioned the purpose of the second color. It was as valid a mistake as a misplay on the board.

“I understand,” he said.

That was it. They finished the play, and he lost.

Fred Blank was next, also picking up the red crayon. Ivo defeated him.

No one kept official score. Apparently it was up to the individual. By the time Ivo completed the circuit, he had nine victories, one defeat.

The group dispersed, the entertainment over. There was no celebration, no awarding of any prize. He could not believe that what he observed was all of it, but hoped to learn the truth from Groton very shortly.

Ivo headed for the door, wondering whether Afra could still be sleeping — there. This entire “night” had a surrealistic flavor; nothing was quite as he expected, though he had thought he had no expectations.

Once more there was a hand at his shoulder. He paused to look down at the woman who had translated for him. “You — you are one loss only,” she said.

He nodded.

“And so with Dr. Kovonov.” She gestured, and he observed the Russian still seated at the table. Everyone else was gone.

“A playoff? What’s the prize?”

She left without answering, and there was nothing to do but rejoin Dr. Kovonov. Now, at last, it came to him: this was the man behind the scene, mentioned so often. The important Russian who compelled even Brad’s intellectual respect.

Did this weird tourney connect with Brad’s rush meeting with this man, yesterday? Had they agreed then that Brad should watch the destroyer with Senator Borland? Did Kovonov know Ivo’s own secret, the power he had over Schön? He doubted that last; he just couldn’t imagine that Brad would have told anyone that. Unless Afra — no! Still, this man appeared to be the most tangible source of information about Brad’s action. And he spoke no English!

Kovonov picked up the red crayon and made seven dots, just as he had before. Ivo smiled; the good doctor really wanted to win this one!

This time, familiar with the rules, Ivo played flawlessly and had the victory, misère.

The Russian did not move or change expression. Ivo erased the design and picked up the blue marker, looking askance. A nod. He set down fifteen spots.

Kovonov smiled and took the crayon. The play was on.

The strategy was fiendishly complex, and his opponent dwelt a long time on each move. Ivo felt the strain as his peculiar talent wrestled with the problem and was baffled. He realized that Kovonov’s greater experience was telling. Having plunged in well over the level of the sure guide of his instinct, Ivo knew that he was not a good player at all. If Kovonov fathomed the game before he did, his talent in the later stage would not avail him; it would only inform him when to concede. The situation was so complex that he might find himself in the losing position even if he did fathom it first; the proper strategy could guide the Russian to victory without complete analysis.

Twenty minutes passed. Kovonov’s broad forehead was damp and his dark hair seemed to erect itself stiffly. Ivo was nervous, too, having no idea where he stood in the game, or whether he really wanted to win. Something very serious was at stake; something Kovonov might well be more competent to possess. The prize might not be a physical one at all.

Why should he let victory or loss concern him? Groton wanted him to win — but Groton hardly knew the truth. There were so many far more important matters to worry about, yet he was taking this foolish tournament as seriously as he ever had taken anything. What did the sprouts championship of this station matter, when his closest friend was a vegetable? So victory would place his name at the top of the sprout-ladder; would that make everything worthwhile?

Then the state of the game clarified: he saw that he could win. Three moves later the Russian reluctantly conceded, and it was over.

Kovonov stood up and walked regretfully over to the statuette ensconced in the middle of the room. Two out of three was it, Ivo decided. Carefully the man lifted the gilded steam-shovel from its pedestal — Ivo could see that it was very heavy, for its size — and brought it to the table.

This was the prize? “What does it mean?” he asked, pointing to the letters on the pedestal, S D P S. He could think of no other comment to make.

He had not expected an answer, in the circumstances, but he received one. “Sooper Dooper Pooper Scooper,” Kovonov said with Russian accent, and smiled evilly. Then he, too, left, and Ivo remained to stare at this final evidence of Brad’s subterranean humor.

A platinum-plated steam-shovel, including the crescent moon symbol, with a world in its mouth. Exactly the type of image Brad would fashion. A friendly insult to the station with the day’s most powerful nose.

So they had had a tourney in Brad’s memory, and the winner inherited the icon. Its value was undoubtedly very high, monetarily and symbolically — but did he really want it?

Ivo tucked it under his arm somewhat awkwardly — it was heavy — and marched back to his room. He was afraid the gesture might be misunderstood, if he returned it to its pedestal.

Afra woke as he entered, instantly alert. “What are you doing with that?” she demanded. She was, of course, still in night clothing, and she had forgotten to replace her slippers. It was quite a contrast to her usual precision of dress, but her beauty powered through all obstacles.

“I guess I won it.”

“You guess you won it!” There was pink polish on her toenails.

“I entered this contest, and it was the prize. Should I put it back?”

“Shut up and let me think.” She recovered her slippers, dusted off her feet, jammed on the footwear. She paced around the room as a man would pace, taking wide strides and swinging into the turns abruptly. The motions, however, did unmanly things to her body.

Ivo watched, still supporting the S D P S. He discovered that he liked Afra angry, too. She had torn off the kerchief, and her bright hair swirled as she spun. Absolutely refined Caucasian, Northwest European, no admixtures… her torso a marvelous sight as thighs braked, arms accelerated, midriff flexed to avoid some structure. Definitely not for the polyglot creature that was what she would perceive him to be. Georgia born…

She halted, hair, breasts and slippers stabilizing in unison. “All right. It’s not all right, but all right! We’ll have to make the best of it. Go fetch Harold — he put you up to this, I’m sure of it — and bring him to my room pronto. No, leave that thing here. Go — on.”

Ivo set down the statuette and retreated before her urgency. He had intended to consult with Groton first; what had brought him back here with the S D P S?

Whom was he fooling? He knew what had brought him back.

“You did it!” Groton exclaimed when Ivo told him. “You took the Scooper!”

“I did it, yes. Now Afra’s furious. She wants to see you in her room. Pronto, she says.”

“Right. Smart girl, that. We’re going to be busy as hell.” Ivo had not heard Groton speak that colloquially before, and he took it as another indication of strain. The afflatus of war, he thought ironically, was breathed upon them all. History repeated itself, as ever. The Senator, in death, had destroyed the macroscope, and all that it might accomplish for the benefit of mankind.

Groton raised his voice. “Beatryx!”

“Yes, dear,” came the quick answer.

“Get into your suit and stand by the tube; we’ll be ferrying some stuff out in a hurry.” Without waiting for her acknowledgment, he drew Ivo back into the hall. “God, I’m glad you did it,” he said. “They have the screws into us, and this is the only way.”

“You’ve left me behind. What are you talking about?”

“No time,” Groton said.

Ivo shrugged once more and followed.

Afra was already in her own suit, the transparent helmet flopping at her back. “Change, Ivo,” she snapped. “Better stick with him, Harold; he’s slow on the uptake.”

“I ask again: what is this all about?” Ivo said as Groton hurried him into his space suit. “Why did you have me enter that tourney, and why is Afra so upset about it? Has the whole station lost its mind?” The afflatus of—

“It’s that dead senator,” Groton said, as though that clarified everything. “Borland is very important in politics, and we’re taking the rap for assassinating him. That flunky of his got on the teletype before we knew it and screamed murder — exactly that. That wipes us out.”

“Well, of course there would be an investigation. But he demanded to see the destroyer, and he had been warned. The evidence should be clear enough.”

Groton stopped for a moment. “You are out of touch! Don’t you know the situation here?”

“Just that the macroscope is under nominal UN auspices, as are all the projects beyond Earth-orbit. Brad told me about the formula for time and financing—” Actually, he could understand why a thing like the destroyer could result in the dismantling of the macroscope, particularly when scandal of this nature developed. But he wanted to hear Groton’s explanation, because that might finally clarify this other business with the tourney and the S D P S.

Groton finished dressing Ivo, then turned to his own suit. In succinct bursts between motions he delivered the political reality, as seen by one who had not talked with the Senator directly. Ivo found this parallel viewpoint intriguing.

Senator Borland (Groton said) was no ordinary man. His connections were potent, not so much in America as in the UN. There were many influential personages behind him, and not a small amount of cash. His boast that he knew the governments of the station’s member-countries (that remark had orbited the personnel rapidly!) better than did their own nationals had not been empty; he was a sophisticated parlayer of influence on an international scale. He would do such-and-such, if in such-and-such a position, and the figures behind the thrones and presidencies knew what and how. It was to China’s interest that he achieve greater influence in the American farming scheme, for the potential of trading in grain remained; it was to Russia’s interest that he make the automotive-exports standards committee, for it regulated other machinery than cars, ranging from precision ball-bearings to theodolites; to South Africa’s interest that he establish private liaison with BlaPow, Inc.

Borland was all things to all peoples — but he was good at it. A promoter could accomplish a great deal, if sophisticated enough. He had already shown that he could and would deliver the goods while making political hay doing it. He had the connections, he had the charisma; somehow private meetings with him made public converts.

Ivo, remembering the Borland-Carpenter dialogue, understood that. Ivo himself was such a convert.

The death of such a man (Groton continued) was bound to mean real trouble, whatever the circumstances. Too many projects were balancing in the air, and the demise of the juggler meant that many would crash. Pledges could no longer be honored, repercussions no longer stymied.

The macroscope was the major UN effort. More international interests were crucially involved there than in any other area. Borland surely had seen its potential, and had acted to make it his own. It represented a ready way to make good on all his commitments, while benefiting the world as a whole. And perhaps he had intended to do just that, for altruistic reasons. (Ivo had not expected this tack.) Perhaps his ambition had gone beyond power, since he was in a position to appreciate how desperately the world needed help. Perhaps the answer to the ruin forecast by the Sung planet’s example had been Borland: someone to organize a more practical application of the immense knowledge available. Who could say for sure, now?

But Borland had died, and in the worst possible manner. He had not trusted hearsay evidence; he had not really believed that the destroyer could bring him down. So he had called its bluff — and lost. The UN would believe that the station personnel had murdered him, perhaps by tricking him into confrontation with that killer from space.

Trouble? As the international eggs began to fall and splatter, the need would grow very strong for an international scapegoat. The seeming cause of crisis: the macroscope.

Now they were both suited and Ivo had still not discovered what they were going about so urgently.

Afra was at the storeroom, moving things about with apparent abandon in the fractional gravity. Ivo spied crates of drugs, spices, grains, bandages and cheese, as well as cylinders of oxygen and liquid nutrient. “What’s your blood type?” she demanded of him.

“O-positive.” What could he do, but answer?

She selected a canister and dumped it near the door. Ivo looked at it: CONDENSED BLOOD O-POSITIVE. There was more technical description, but he averted his eyes, feeling unpleasantly giddy. Presumably there were ways to adjust for the myriad other factors involved in the matching of blood safely. What made her think he would need this?

The storeroom supervisor sat at his desk, head drooping forward as though he were asleep. “Shouldn’t he be checking this stuff out?” Ivo inquired.

“I fed him a mickey,” Afra said. “Or were you being facetious?”

Ivo did not know how to answer that, so didn’t try. There was so much he didn’t know about this situation!

Afra turned to Groton. “I’ll shape this up here and move it with the powercart. You get the personal junk assembled. Better make it one box each, limit.”

“What do you need?” Groton asked Ivo.

So many unanswered questions, but he had to do the answering! “If you mean what do I take with me when I leave this place, nothing. I have my flute with me.”

“I forgot — you’re already suited,” Afra said. “I’ll select some clothing for you; more efficient that way.” She turned to Groton. “Better fetch Joseph.”

Ivo started. “Joseph! Isn’t that the souped-up rocket?”

“Right,” Groton agreed. “Come on.”

He and Ivo jetted across to the huge rocket much as Brad had demonstrated the first trip to the macroscope proper, except for the necessary change in course this time. Spurts from a cylinder of hydrogen peroxide took care of the propulsion.

Joseph’s hull was like a planetoid, seeming much vaster than it was, since there were no nearby objects to contrast for size. Ivo managed to land on his feet, having gained from his prior experience, and the magnetic shoe-bands took hold so that he could walk. They marched to the control compartment airlock and knocked.

The interior was larger than that of the shuttle. Joseph had been gutted and rebuilt, so that the layout was like nothing Ivo had seen in space. Evidently the atomic equipment occupied less volume than had the chemical fuel before it, so that one of the monster internal tanks could be used for living space. He could almost imagine that he was in a futuristic submarine.

In a manner of thinking, this was a futuristic sub.

“Course correction,” Groton said to the attendant. “Can you hitch this baby up to the scope?”

“Sure, in a couple of days,” the man said amicably.

“This is an emergency. Two hours.”

“I can move it there, but I can’t hitch it up in that time. Take a trained crew of twenty men to do that.”

Groton rolled his eyes. “Ouch! Well, you move it over and I’ll do what I can. Ivo, better jet back to the scope and tell Afra, while I check with Kovonov. This is going to be sticky.”

The attendant held up a hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, naturally — but don’t you think you’d better see Miss Summerfield?”

“No. Ivo doesn’t—” Groton stopped. “Damn, yes. It has to be that way. Ivo, go tell Kovonov what we need. Then join us there. Don’t waste any time.”

Ivo hung on to his patience. “Exactly what are you doing? Why do you want to hitch Joseph to the macroscope?”

“To correct the scope’s course, as I explained.”

“What’s the matter with its present course? It’s attached to the station, after all.”

“We think it is about to fall into the sun.”

“That’s ridiculous! It’s in orbit! And the station—”

The attendant smiled. “It might as well fall. The UN will destroy it anyway.”

“So you see, we need that crew immediately. Tell Kovonov.”

Ivo saw that they weren’t going to give him a legitimate explanation. Angrily, he snapped his helmet to and left the compartment.

Kovonov’s office was a niche in a heavy-gravity shell. It struck Ivo that this was an effective way to keep visits brief; anyone who stayed too long would fatigue rapidly. Momentary weight-increase could be put up with, but a steady diet of it was distinctly unpleasant. He wondered how the host endured it.

Kovonov looked up from a book set in what Ivo assumed to be Russian type. He did not speak.

The language barrier! “Groton says we need a crew of twenty men to stop the macroscope from falling into the sun,” Ivo said, knowing that the Russian could not understand a word.

Kovonov listened gravely, then touched two switches. Ivo heard his own words played back: they had been recorded. Another voice rattled off incomprehensible syllables: the translation.

Kovonov nodded.

“Can you tell me what this is all about? I don’t—”

The hand came up to silence him. Kovonov switched off the machine without obtaining the translation and brought out a small blackboard and two colored pieces of chalk. He made three blue dots.

What was this fascination with sprouts? The scientists of this station acted as though a simple game were more important than life or death. Did Kovonov seriously mean to ignore his question and rechallenge for the championship?

But it was not a contest this time. Kovonov filled in the connections himself without offering the chalk to Ivo. He was setting up a three-spot demonstration game of no particular complexity. The series went seven moves:

The result reminded Ivo of a shovel. “But it isn’t finished,” he said. “There’s a free spot at either end.”

Kovonov turned the panel over without erasing it and set up three dots more nearly in line, this time in red. He played through in the same fashion as before. This game, when halted, looked more like a telescope.

He handed the board to Ivo.

Obviously the designs were significant, rather than the games from which they were derived. The shovel on one side, telescope on the other. They were topologically equivalent, Ivo’s talent informed him; one could be distorted into the other without the erasure or crossing of any of the lines. They were, in fact, the same game, played in the same fashion. A three-spot sprout effort brought to one step from conclusion.

Kovonov was trying to tell him something.

Then he had it. The shovel, the scope — the same, linked by the sprouts. By extension, the steam-shovel and the macroscope. He had entered the sprouts tourney—

And won the macroscope!

Senator Borland’s death spelled the end of the project, by whatever line of reasoning one approached it. This was a culmination none of the participating scientists or other personnel desired. There was no internal rivalry in this connection; nationality had been superseded by a higher calling. There appeared to be no way to reverse the ponderous, political, UN decision.

Unless someone took away the macroscope, and thus preserved it from harm. Kovonov had obviously intended to win this privilege — until Ivo had defeated him in the runoff. Now the onus was his own.

It would mean banishment from Earth, of course. Such a colossal theft—

Ivo knew he was going to do it. They were right: the macroscope was far too valuable to abolish, or even to entrust to political whim. The presence of the destroyer, far from arguing against the macroscope, pointed up the extreme necessity of further study. Mankind could not turn isolationist; that was the way of the proboscoids.

The knowledge of the universe (the galaxy, at least) lay within man’s reach, if not his grasp. It was a knowledge man had to have, however shortsighted the local politicians. Ivo had the ability to use the macroscope, since he had demonstrated his ability to survive the destroyer. He did not have to fear ambush and mindlessness in the main band. He also had contact — potential contact — with the person who could make the most of that knowledge: Schön. Perhaps this was the real reason Brad had summoned him. Not to crack the destroyer; to make use of the knowledge behind it, once cracked.

Except that he did not intend to involve Schön. This was something he would undertake by himself — no matter how lonely a task it was. He had won the right. At least he would have the macroscope for company, and would be able to watch the events of Earth. If the political situation changed, he would know it, and could bring home the instrument.

Kovonov was waiting patiently for his chain of thought to finish. Ivo erased the blackboard, both sides, and set it down. He stood up and gravely offered his hand to the Russian. Perhaps, of the two of them, the Russian had the more difficult task, for the UN investigation would not be kind. Heads, figuratively and possibly literally, would roll.

In a gesture as grave as Ivo’s, Kovonov took that hand.