"Plans are in the architectural offices," Groating said. "It isn't due
for construction for another thirty years. We intend placing it at the
north end of Central Park--"
It was difficult to hear them. The room was filled with the bellow
and roar of shouting from the amphitheater. It was packed from pit to
gallery with quick-jerking figures. They climbed across the terraces;
they fought up and down the broad aisles; they stood on their seats and
waved. Most of all they opened their mouths into gaping black blots and
shouted. The hoarse sound rolled like slow, thunderous waves, and there
was a faint rhythm struggling to emerge from the chaos.
A figure appeared from behind the columns, walked calmly up to the
platform and began arranging cards on the small table. It was FitzJohn,
icy and self-possessed, statuesque in his white tunic. He stood
alongside the table, carefully sorting his notes, utterly oblivious of
the redoubled roar that went up at his appearance. Out of that turmoil
came the accented beats of a doggerel rhyme:
Neon
Crypton
Ammoniated
FitzJohn
Neon
Crypton
Ammoniated
FitzJohn
When he was finished, FitzJohn straightened and, resting the fingertips
of his right hand lightly on top of the table, he gazed out at
the rioting--un-smiling, motionless. The pandemonium was reaching
unprecedented heights. As the chanting continued, costumed figures
appeared on the terrace tops and began fighting down the aisles
toward the platform. There were men wearing metal-tubed frame-works
representing geometric figures. Cubes, spheres, rhomboids and
tesseracts. They hopped and danced outlandishly.
Two young boys began unreeling a long streamer from a drum concealed
behind the colonnade. It was of white silk and an endless equation was
printed on it that read:
eia = 1 + ia - a2! + a3! - a4!...
and so on, yard after yard after yard. It didn't exactly make sense,
but I understood it to be some kind of cutting reference to FitzJohn's
equations.
There were hundreds of others, some surprising and many obscure. Lithe
contortionists, made up to represent Möbius Strips, grasped ankles with
their hands and went rolling down the aisles. A dozen girls appeared
from nowhere, clad only in black net representing giant Aleph-Nulls,
and began an elaborate ballet. Great gas-filled balloons, shaped into
weird topological manifolds were dragged in and bounced around.
It was utter insanity and utterly degrading to see how these mad
college kids were turning FitzJohn's lecture into a Mardi Gras. They
were college kids, of course, crazy youngsters who probably couldn't
explain the binomial theorem, but nevertheless were giving their
own form of expression to their teachers' antagonism to FitzJohn. I
thought vaguely of the days centuries back when a thousand Harvard
undergraduates did a very similar thing when Oscar Wilde came to
lecture. Undergraduates whose entire reading probably consisted of the
_Police Gazette_.
And all the while they danced and shouted and screamed, FitzJohn stood
motionless, fingertips just touching the table, waiting for them to
finish. You began with an admiration for his composure. Then suddenly
you realized what a breathtaking performance was going on. You glued
your eyes to the motionless figure and waited for it to move--and it
never did.
What?
You don't think that was so terrific, eh? Well, one of you get up and
try it. Stand alongside a table and rest your fingertips lightly on the
top--not firmly enough to bear the weight of your arm--but just enough
to make contact. Maybe it sounds simple. Just go ahead and try it.
I'll bet every credit I ever own no one of you can stand there without
moving for sixty seconds. Any takers? I thought not. You begin to get
the idea, eh?
They began to get the same idea in the amphitheater. At first the
excitement died down out of shame. There's not much fun making a holy
show of yourself if your audience doesn't react. They started it up
again purely out of defiance, but it didn't last long. The chanting
died away, the dancers stopped cavorting, and at last that entire
audience of thousands stood silent, uneasily watching FitzJohn. He
never moved a muscle.
After what seemed like hours of trying to outstare him, the kids
suddenly gave in. Spatters of applause broke out across the terraces.
The clapping was taken up and it rose to a thunder of beating palms. No
one is as quick to appreciate a great performance as a youngster. These
kids sat down in their seats and applauded like mad. FitzJohn never
moved until the applause, too, had died down, then he picked up his
card and, without preamble--as though nothing at all had happened--he
began his lecture.
* * * * *
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been accused of creating my theory of
energy-dynamics and my mathematics out of nothing--and my critics cry:
'From nothing comes nothing.' Let me remind you first that man does
not create in the sense of inventing what never existed before. Man
only discovers. The things we seem to invent, no matter how novel and
revolutionary, we merely discover. They have been waiting for us all
the time.
"Moreover, I was not the sole discoverer of this theory. No scientist
is a lone adventurer, striking out into new fields for himself. The way
is always led by those who precede us, and we who seem to discover all,
actually do no more than add our bit to an accumulated knowledge.
"To show you how small my own contribution was and how much I inherited
from the past, let me tell you that the basic equation of my theory
is not even my own. It was discovered some fifty years prior to this
day--some ten years before I was born.
"For on the evening of February 9, 2909, in Central Park, on the very
site of this amphitheater, my father, suddenly struck with an idea,
mentioned an equation to my mother. That equation:
i = (b/a) π i e/μ..."
was the inspiration for my own theory. So you can understand just
how little I have contributed to the 'invention' of The Tension
Energy-Dynamics Equations--"
FitzJohn glanced at the first card and went on: "Let us consider, now,
the possible permutations on the factor
e/μ..."
I yelled: "That's plenty. Cut!" and before the first word was out of
my mouth the controller and the C-S were shouting, too. Yarr blanked
out the crystal and brought up the lights. We were all on our feet,
looking at each other excitedly. Yarr jumped up so fast his chair went
over backward with a crash. We were in a fever because, boys, that day
happened to be February 9, 2909, and we had just about two hours until
evening.