"Telepathy? Time travel?" After three hours of listening, the
ex-President was still not sure he understood.
"Think of it this way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given
instant as being surrounded by a shield--a shield of privacy--a shield
which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect
insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you _have_ to
have it in order to retain your privacy--your sense of identity, even.
But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get in, _you_ can't
get out!
"You can call this shield 'self-consciousness'--perhaps _shame_ is a
better word. Everyone has it, to some degree; no telepathic thought can
break through it. Occasionally, some people will relax it for a fraction
of a second, but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up
again."
"Then how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?" The Senator
looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into his briar.
"You don't go _through_ it; you go _around_ it."
* * * * *
"Now wait a minute; that sounds like some of those fourth dimension
stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger, I read a murder
mystery--something about a morgue, I think. At any rate, the murder was
committed inside a locked room; no one could possibly have gotten in or
out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer traveled through
the fourth dimension in order to get at the victim. He didn't go through
the walls; he went around them." The Senator puffed a match flame into
the bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man. "Is that what you're
driving at?"
"Exactly," agreed Camberton. "The fourth dimension. Time. You must go
back in time to an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant has
no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world. You must travel back
down your own four-dimensional tube of memory in order to get outside
it, and to do that, you have to know your own mind completely, and you
must be _sure_ you know it.
"For only if you know your own mind can you communicate with another
mind. Because, at the 'instant' of contact, you _become_ that person;
you must enter his own memory at the beginning and go _up_ the
hyper-tube. You will have all his memories, his hopes, his fears, his
_sense of identity_. Unless you know--beyond any trace of doubt--who
_you_ are, the result is insanity."
* * * * *
The Senator puffed his pipe for a moment, then shook his head. "It
sounds like Oriental mysticism to me. If you can travel in time, you'd
be able to change the past."
"Not at all," Camberton said; "that's like saying that if you read a
book, the author's words will change.
"Time isn't like that. Look, suppose you had a long trough filled with
supercooled water. At one end, you drop in a piece of ice. Immediately
the water begins to freeze; the crystallization front moves toward the
other end of the trough. Behind that front, there is ice--frozen,
immovable, unchangeable. Ahead of it there is water--fluid, mobile,
changeable.
"The instant we call 'the present' is like that crystallization front.
The past is unchangeable; the future is flexible. But they both exist."
"I see--at least, I think I do. And you can do all this?"
"Not yet," said Camberton; "not completely. My mind isn't as strong as
Wendell's, nor as capable. I'm not the--shall we say--the superman he
is; perhaps I never will be. But I'm learning--I'm learning. After all,
it took Paul twenty years to do the trick under the most favorable
circumstances imaginable."
"I see." The Senator smoked his pipe in silence for a long time.
Camberton lit a cigaret and said nothing. After a time, the Senator took
the briar from his mouth and began to tap the bowl gently on the heel of
his palm. "Mr. Camberton, why do you tell me all this? I still have
influence with the Senate; the present President is a protégé of mine.
It wouldn't be too difficult to get you men--ah--put away again. I have
no desire to see our society ruined, our world destroyed. Why do you
tell me?"
* * * * *
Camberton smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid you might find it a little
difficult to put us away again, sir; but that's not the point. You see,
we need you. We have no desire to destroy our present culture until we
have designed a better one to replace it.
"You are one of the greatest living statesmen, Senator; you have a
wealth of knowledge and ability that can never be replaced; knowledge
and ability that will help us to design a culture and a civilization
that will be as far above this one as this one is above the wolf pack.
We want you to come in with us, help us; we want you to be one of us."
"I? I'm an old man, Mr. Camberton. I will be dead before this
civilization falls; how can I help build a new one? And how could I, at
my age, be expected to learn this technique?"
"Paul Wendell says you can. He says you have one of the strongest minds
now existing."
The Senator put his pipe in his jacket pocket. "You know, Camberton, you
keep referring to Wendell in the present tense. I thought you said he
was dead."
Again Camberton gave him the odd smile. "I didn't say that, Senator; I
said they buried his body. That's quite a different thing. You see,
before the poor, useless hulk that held his blasted brain died, Paul
gave the eight of us his memories; he gave us _himself_. The mind is not
the brain, Senator; we don't know what it _is_ yet, but we do know what
it _isn't_. Paul's poor, damaged brain is dead, but his memories, his
thought processes, the very essence of all that was Paul Wendell is
still very much with us.
"Do you begin to see now why we want you to come in with us? There are
nine of us now, but we need the tenth--you. Will you come?"
"I--I'll have to think it over," the old statesman said in a voice that
had a faint quaver. "I'll have to think it over."
But they both knew what his answer would be.