The Complete Stories (Page 85)

The Novian looked past George. "Ingenescu! I think I have done you your favor. Now, really, I have a heavy schedule tomorrow. Be well."

The screen went blank.

George’s hands shot out toward the screen, as though in a wild impulse to shake life back into it. He cried out, "He didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe me."

Ingenescu said, "No, George. Did you really think he would?"

George scarcely heard him. "But why not? It’s all true. It’s all so much to his advantage. No risk. I and a few men to work with- A dozen men training for years would cost less than one technician. -He was drunk. Drunk! He didn’t understand."

George looked about breathlessly. "How do I get to him? I’ve got to. This was wrong. Shouldn’t have used the visiphone. I need time. Face to face. How do I-"

Ingenescu said, "He won’t see you, George. And if he did, he wouldn’t believe you."

"He will, I tell you. When he isn’t drinking. He-" George turned squarely toward the Historian and his eyes widened. "Why do you call me George?"

"Isn’t that your name? George Platen?"

"You know me?"

"All about you."

George was motionless except for the breath pumping his chest wall up and down.

Ingenescu said, "I want to help you, George. I told you that. I’ve been studying you and I want to help you."

George screamed, "I don’t need help. I’m not feeble-minded. The whole world is, but I’m not." He whirled and dashed madly for the door.

He flung it open and two policemen roused themselves suddenly from their guard duty and seized him.

For all George’s straining, he could feel the hypo-spray at the fleshy point just under the corner of his jaw, and that was it. The last thing he remembered was the face of Ingenescu, watching with gentle concern.

George opened his eyes to the whiteness of a ceiling. He remembered what had happened. He remembered it distantly as though it had happened to somebody else. He stared at the ceiling till the whiteness filled his eyes and washed his brain clean, leaving room, it seemed, for new thought and new ways of thinking.

He didn’t know how long he lay there so, listening to the drift of his own thinking.

There was a voice in his ear. "Are you awake?"

And George heard his own moaning for the first time. Had he been moaning? He tried to turn his head.

The voice said, "Are you in pain, George?"

George whispered, "Funny. I was so anxious to leave Earth. I didn’t understand."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Back in the-the House." George managed to turn. The voice be-longed to Omani.

George said, "It’s funny Ididn’t understand."

Omani smiled gently, "Sleep again-"

George slept.

And woke again. His mind was clear.

Omani sat at the bedside reading, but he put down the book as George’s eyes opened.

George struggled to a sitting position. He said, "Hello."

"Are you hungry?"

"You bet." He stared at Omani curiously. "I was followed when I left, wasn’t I?"

Omani nodded. "You were under observation at all times. We were going to maneuver you to Antonelli and let you discharge your aggressions. We felt that to be the only way you could make progress. Your emotions were clogging your advance."

George said, with a trace of embarrassment, "I was all wrong about him."

"It doesn’t matter now. When you stopped to stare at the Metallurgy notice board at the airport, one of our agents reported back the list of names. You and I had talked about your past sufficiently so that I caught the significance of Trevelyan’s name there. You asked for directions to the Olympics; there was the possibility that this might result in the kind of crisis we were hoping for; we sent Ladislas Ingenescu to the hall to meet you and take over."

"He’s an important man in the government, isn’t he?"

”Yes, he is.”

"And you had him take over. It makes me sound important."

"You are important, George."

A thick stew had arrived, steaming, fragrant. George grinned wolfishly and pushed his sheets back to free his arms. Omani helped arrange the bed-table. For a while, George ate silently.

Then George said, "I woke up here once before just for a short time."

Omani said, "I know. I was here."

"Yes, I remember. You know, everything was changed. It was as though I was too tired to feel emotion. I wasn’t angry any more. I could just think. It was as though I had been drugged to wipe out emotion."

"You weren’t," said Omani. "Just sedation. You had rested."

"Well, anyway, it was all clear to me, as though I had known it all the time but wouldn’t listen to myself. I thought: What was it I had wanted

Novia to let me do? I had wanted to go to Novia and take a batch of un-Educated youngsters and teach them out of books. I had wanted to establish a House for the Feeble-minded-like here-and Earth already has them-many of them."

Omani’s white teeth gleamed as he smiled. "The Institute of Higher Studies is the correct name for places like this."

"Now I see it," said George, "so easily I am amazed at my blindness before. After all, who invents the new instrument models that require new-model technicians? Who invented the Beeman spectrographs, for instance? A man called Beeman, I suppose, but he couldn’t have been tape-Educated or how could he have made the advance?"

"Exactly."

"Or who makes Educational tapes? Special tape-making technicians? Then who makes the tapes to train them? More advanced technicians? Then who makes the tapes- You see what I mean. Somewhere there has to be an end. Somewhere there must be men and women with capacity for original thought."