The school

V.

He called at the office where Don Wolfe was waiting for him, to let the counselor know he was leaving, but he didn’t feel talkative and Wolfe let him go without pressing him for conversation about what he had found.

He ignored the call which the desk clerk said had come through from Dodge. He had reported once today; that was enough. He requested that he be not disturbed by calls of any kind during the night.

It seemed impossible to sleep and he lay for a long time looking down at the rocky shore and the narrow strip of sand at the base of the jutting cliffs nearby. His mind was swarming with confused, tormenting thoughts, and yet he seemed almost able to stand aside, viewing them objectively and without panic.

He seemed to have come a far way from the Firestone Aviation Corporation and the XB-91, where all this had begun. He wondered how Soren Gunderson was making out, if the designer’s experiences were as rough as his. He didn’t see how they could be. Gunderson was successful and creative.

It seemed to Montgomery that he had almost forgotten the original purpose of his coming. But he had to remember it and evaluate it anew. Was the work of the Institute a hoax and a menace for Dodge and Spindem to bring to a halt? He thought of the Norcross demonstrations with fresh excitement. There was nothing phony about them, he was certain now. He had no positive evidence to support it. His own experience had convinced him. Years of unrecognized but ever-present tension and fear were gone. He could look upon the reality of his own failings without shrinking from the sight.

His position was reversed. He was no longer an agent of Dodge to find a legitimate excuse to close up the Institute. He was an Institute agent who had to find means of persuading Dodge that something of value existed here.

He didn’t know how this was going to be done. Perhaps he ought to go to Nagle and Berkeley and confess why he had come. But it wasn’t as easy as all that. He was still under orders from Colonel Dodge.

Soren Gunderson was in a foul mood when Montgomery found him the next morning. He was sitting on the lawn near one side of the court, talking with a younger man. His face was dark and unpleasant in a way that Montgomery had never seen before in all the years of their association. Gunderson was ordinarily placid and easygoing.

He motioned to a seat. “This is another of the new supermen. Major Eugene Montgomery of the United States Air Force; Mr. Mahlon Rockwood recently of Acme Refrigerators, Incorporated.”

The two men shook hands, smiling at each other a trifle uneasily in Gunderson’s dour presence.

“Mr. Rockwood has some interesting observations on this matter we’re all interested in,” said Gunderson. “He thinks our friend Nagle is pretty much off the beam in laying so much blame on the schools for the widespread technological stupidity.”

Montgomery grinned sympathetically. It was obvious that Gunderson was trying to unload something extremely potent, and hadn’t succeeded yet. He turned inquiringly to the younger engineer.

“I was just saying that most new engineering graduates can’t take the risk,” said Rockwood. “As in my case, most of the fellows are working at a place where sales are doing nicely on the old lines. They’re buying a twenty thousand dollar home in somebody’s development — which will have cost them twice that before it’s paid for in thirty or forty years. They’re expecting to send their own kids to college — they’ve got one or two now and expect more. They can’t risk badgering the chief engineer or the factory manager or the sales chief to come out with something new that might upset the whole refrigeration business, for example.

“So for the new model they decide to hang a butter softener in the door. Or maybe put the coils in the walls — and take them out next year. Then if they feel real daring they’ll do something drastic like revolving shelves — produce a real contribution to the science of food preservation!”

Montgomery laughed. “Almost as good as the calico doors we had a year or two back.”

Rockwell nodded. “But that’s the situation we’re in, and I wonder if it doesn’t extend even into the aircraft industry in a different form. Nobody in any kind of business wants to change his model as long as the old one sells. That’s the basic fact that everybody’s overlooking. And when a change is made it must be a minimum — not a maximum — change. Every engineering professor in the country seems determined to keep this a deep, dark secret.”

Gunderson snorted. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it really were that simple?” He turned to Montgomery. “I’m kind of sorry I got you to come up here with me, Jack. I really thought these guys had something. I guess maybe they still think they do. But they just don’t know what they’re bucking.”

“What are they — and we — bucking?”

“Ever hear of ‘steam-engine time’?”

“No. What’s that?”

“Some mystic named Fort thought up the term. It means that when a culture has reached a point when it’s time for the steam engine to be invented the steam engine is going to be invented. It doesn’t matter who’s alive to do the inventing, whether it’s Hero of Greece, or Tim Walt of England, or Joe Doakus of Pulaski — the steam engine is going to get invented by somebody. Conversely, if it’s not steam-engine time nobody under the sun is going to invent it no matter how smart he is.

“Others have put it a little more elegantly by saying that it is impossible for one to rise above his culture. That’s the thing we’re trying to buck — and we can’t do it.”

“If that were true, there would be nothing but stagnation. Somebody has to rise and draw the culture up with him.”

“No, no —” Gunderson looked almost angry. “Take mathematics for example. A mathematician does his building on the foundation that’s already there. Nobody in Pythagoras’ time was going to invent tensors or quaternions. The culture for it wasn’t there. Suppose Einstein had been born in a Polynesian tribe. Do you think he would have produced his work on Relativity in that culture?

“Uh-uh. And it doesn’t matter how smart we are or how much we get our brains polished up in the Mirror — we aren’t going to take the next steps we want to take until the culture is ready for them. That might be fifty years from now, for all we know. You can’t lick the principle of steam-engine time.”

“So what are we going to do about it?” said Montgomery. “Sit back and wait until steam-engine time catches up with us?”

Gunderson glanced up, his eyes dark, knowing Montgomery was mocking him. Instantly, the major regretted his words. “I didn’t mean it that way — I think you’ll find the answer in the Mirror.”

“That’s what Nagle keeps telling me! We went round and round over this yesterday, and all he’d do was smile and tell me to look in the Mirror.”

Montgomery didn’t know the answer to the argument of steam-engine time. Maybe a man couldn’t rise above his culture. He doubted, however, that he had to remain immersed to eye-level height in it forever. But he knew now, at least, what was holding Gunderson back! He wondered what the engineer would find when he searched the Mirror for the answer.

He went almost reluctantly to the appointment with his own Mirror. He felt he had reached a position of equilibrium which he hesitated to disturb. Admitting his own cowardice and inadequacies was more pleasant than what he might find next.

A world of nightmare swarmed up to meet him as soon as he donned the headpiece. He thought he was prepared for almost anything the Mirror could show, but this was something new.

He had found out how to control the speed, so to speak, of his approach to the image, and he held it down now, feeling his way slowly through the bewildering unknown. It was difficult to keep aware that this was the labyrinth of his own mind he was searching. He couldn’t believe that he had walked about daily for his thirty-five years with this nightmare and terror locked up inside him.

It seemed as if all the normal quality of his senses had been stripped away. He had no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor fingers with which to feel. But there was awareness of life, a sharp, ecstatic awareness that filled his whole being. It was intense, as if it alone occupied the whole world.

And then there was — death!

It had been approaching for long aeons, slowly dimming the ecstasy. But he screamed aloud when he finally recognized it for what it was. The gradual diminishment of life was like a fire going out in all the cells of his being, and the coursing liquids slowed and turned cold.

He fought back to awareness of his body, and knew he was dying — now. He felt it in his arms and legs. His heartbeat was slow and his breath came in gasps that had all but ceased. He couldn’t find light with his eyes any longer. There was only the great, empty shadow into which he was slowly drifting. This was death.

At first he could not discern the enemy. He had believed there was no life but his own. Now he was aware that there was life all about him. While his own was decreasing, this other was growing, drawing from him his own vital force of existence.

He reached out involuntarily to struggle against that enemy and felt it react. He felt the sick flood of its revulsion wash through him, poisoning, destroying. But an understanding came. He could make a bargain —

The enemy was supporting him — how, he didn’t know. But his demands had been too great. The enemy rebelled for its own safety and had begun first to withdraw its support, then actively attack him. He could offer to curb his demands, to lessen his requirements. Then they could both survive. He didn’t know if it would be accepted. He was at the mercy of the other. But he sent out his offer and his appeal —

Faintly, the fires seemed to rise in the distant cells of him. The liquids were renewed. His offer was acceptable. His life was restored to him again.

But not so high as before. Some of the ecstasy was gone, and the fear remained — the deadly fear that if he demanded his full portion he would be annihilated.

Where did such a nightmare arise? It had diminished, but he was still shaking in every muscle as he became aware of the panels of the Mirror. Perspiration soaked his clothes.

It was nothing that had ever happened to him. Of that he was certain. For some reason his imagination had been harboring this fantasy of death, controlling him with it. It had to be a symbol of something else, having no reality in itself.

Hesitantly, he glanced at his watch and then at the panels of the Mirror. It didn’t seem possible that he had spent half a day with it already. He ought to call it enough for now. Wolfe had cautioned him to not spend more time than this at a single sitting. But he had to get another look at that symbol of terror and find out its meaning. If it had one —

He went back again and again to look more closely each time, to feel more intimately the sense of death. Until at last he was able to look continually without cringing.

It was late evening when he took off the headpiece. A faint smile was on his lips as he closed the door of the room behind him.

He spent two hours more searching the stacks of the fairly ample library of the Institute. Then he returned to the hotel, and his smile was broader than ever as he entered the door. The psychiatrist, Dr. Spindem, was waiting for him in the lobby.

He arose and came forward, hand outstretched to greet Montgomery. His face was beaming professionally and his eyes scanned the major intently.

“I came as quickly as I could,” he said. “I told Colonel Dodge we couldn’t afford to endanger unnecessarily a man with your qualifications.”

Montgomery chuckled. “I can imagine what Dodge’s answer was!”

“What do you mean by that?” Spindem’s eyes sharpened their inspection.

“Nothing — particularly.”

“You mean you feel the colonel doesn’t appreciate you?” Spindem insisted.

“Something like that,” Montgomery agreed. “Would you like to come up to my room where we can talk?”

Spindem nodded. “Yes. I want to hear everything you’ve found out so far about this incredible, so-called Institute.”

The psychiatrist remained silent during the ride in the elevator and the walk to Montgomery’s room. But the major could feel the constant inspection of his eyes almost as if it were a physical probing. He guessed that he was already written pretty far down in Spindem’s little black book.

“Drink?” he offered as they sat down. “I haven’t anything here, but we can have something sent up.”

“No, thanks,” said Spindem. “I’d like to hear immediately everything you’ve experienced — particularly about this so-called Mirror.”

Montgomery began with his experiences of the first day, describing in detail the demonstration put on by Norcross.

“What do you suppose the purpose of that was?” said Spindem. “Is it a standard sort of show which is put on for all newcomers?”

“It’s no show. I thought it was faked up, too, when I first saw it. It isn’t. It’s genuine. The men who have gone through enough hours with the Mirror can actually do those things.”

“Some form of hypnosis, unquestionably,” said Spindem. “You’ll pardon my disagreement, but you understand, I’m sure, that my professional experience enables a more accurate interpretation of such mental phenomena.”

“Of course,” said Montgomery. He continued with Dr. Nagle’s analysis of the educational system as a homeostatic mechanism and his own verification of this function.

“A novel concept,” said Spindem, “and obviously very naïve, not taking into consideration at all the converse situation if there were no universal distribution of knowledge.”

Montgomery started to interrupt, but the psychiatrist continued. “I am most interested in your statements about your high-school mathematics teacher. You say you believe this Mr. Carling purposely and deliberately made geometry and algebra unpleasant to you so that you would not pursue them too far?”

“Paranoid, I believe you call an attitude like that, don’t you?” said Montgomery, his face expressionless. “A persecution complex —”

“Please —” Spindem’s face looked pained. “I am not here for the purpose of personal diagnosis, major. My only interest is in the effects of this Mirror.”

“I’m sorry,” said Montgomery. “Your question permits of no simple answer. Mr. Carling was utterly incapable of teaching mathematics in any way that would not make it completely repulsive. The subject held no fascination for him, and it was inconceivable that it should for anyone else.

“The principal was aware of Carling’s work, but he didn’t know there was anything wrong with it, either. The School Board knew the principal’s feelings and attitude and considered him a fine man for the job. Everyone knew - but nobody believed anything needed to be done about the situation. And Carling went on turning out his scores of pupils, year after year, who hated mathematics with an almost personal bitterness.”

“That is hardly to say that all this was deliberate and purposeful, even if completely true,” said Spindem.

“I thought psychiatry was the first to deny that any accident exists in human performance,” said Montgomery. “Your teachings are that when an effect is produced by human beings it was the intention of those persons to produce that exact effect. You are familiar with the individual subconscious, but there is a group subconscious, as well. No one would ever admit it was the purpose of my school to produce haters of mathematics. I say it was the purpose — the unstated, subconscious purpose of the entire group involved.”

Spindem made no comment. His lips pressed together in a thinner line as his eyes scanned Montgomery’s face intently.

“And the Mirror told you this?” he said finally.

“I was able to determine it for myself, after the Mirror minimized the fear of recognizing this fact.”

“And why should there be any fear in recognizing it — if it were true?”

“Because of the unevenness of the contest: me against the whole educational system.”

“Or the educational system and society against you?” said Spindem with lifted eyebrows.

“Either way you want it,” said Montgomery.

“And is there anything else you have determined from looking into this Mirror?”

“Yes. I found out why I didn’t have more courage and gumption to stand on my hind legs and protest people like Carling and his kind. There are other people who have made more of a stand than I have, as is obvious to you. But I simply knuckled under.”

“Why?”

Montgomery told then of his long experience with the Mirror that day, the sensation of death and an enemy with whom he compromised to save his life. Spindem listened with interest.

“Have you dreamed previously in this same manner?” he asked as the major finished.

“It was no dream,” said Montgomery. “I was wide-awake.”

“Of course. In the case of this afternoon’s experience — but I would think the same symbolism had probably occurred frequently in dreams during your lifetime. Unless it were induced wholly by the Mirror.”

“It was not induced by the machine, and it was not symbolism,” said Montgomery. “I can tell you exactly what it was.”

“Please do.”

“I wasn’t quite sure of myself even after a whole day with this experience,” said Montgomery slowly. “I spent a couple of hours afterwards brushing up on my psychoanalysis a bit, to see if it was creditable in terms of your field.

“I find your authorities agreeing almost universally that the psyche of the individual has an unknown beginning and a long history antedating the event of its physical birth. My experience with the Mirror confirms it. I was a living, responsive entity at the time my mother’s organism tried to destroy me. The event I spoke of was a threatened miscarriage. Through the endocrine flow that passed between us I recognized that I was being killed. Poisons were beginning to circulate within me and essential elements withheld.

“There was the impression that the maternal body was too weak to support me. My growth demands were too great, and the only way it could survive was by destroying me. And then, on a biochemical level, I made a bargain. My organism agreed with the mother organism to accept less, to limit my demands for sustenance in exchange for the right to live. The bargain was made and kept.

“That was my first major piece of education. I learned that in order to live I must limit myself, always take less than I need, diminish myself to the subsistence level in every way. That was a pattern I have maintained throughout my life. I have never dared create — to do so meant death. I learned that long ago as a fetus, and the lesson remained until today.”

Dr. Spindem took a deep breath. “Major, you leave me no doubt about the absolute danger of this Institute. You are treading in the most dangerous areas of human experience. Of course we admit that the human psyche does not come into existence at birth. But it is utterly impossible for you to know that the things you have described ever took place. Even admitting that these fantasies are your own and not the induction of this machine, it is mental suicide to attempt your own interpretation. Only a skilled and experienced professional mind could possibly provide you with a proper understanding of them.”

“In the Forties,” said Montgomery, “one of your own people, the Hungarian psychoanalyst, N. Fodor, showed a practical method of reaching the pre-birth unconscious and de-educating the individual in the lessons learned there which are no longer applicable to post-birth life. You cannot deny the validity of it. The Mirror is simply an extension and improvement over Dr. Fodor’s findings. Tomorrow I shall prove it to you.”

“How?” Spindem demanded.

“Tomorrow I shall create something for the first time in my life. I shall create an airfoil which will revolutionize high-altitude flight.”

Dr. Spindem stood up. “It is obvious, Major Montgomery, that you have endured a terrible ordeal at the hands of these people who operate this pseudo-analytic device they call the Mirror. It is my professional duty to recommend to your superior, Colonel Dodge, that you be withdrawn from the project immediately. Adequate evidence already exists to force the closing of the Institute. It is morally impossible to allow you to risk your mind further.

“For yourself, I must recommend immediate therapy. In order to minimize the danger of delay I would suggest we arrange for tomorrow morning the first of a series of electroshock treatments for you. If treatment is begun at once, the effects of this terrible experience should begin to disappear within five or six weeks.”

“Not tomorrow,” said Montgomery. “I have to design an airfoil. Perhaps in a day or two after that.”