"No, of course not. They haven't committed any crime, usually; and we
have no intention of punishing them. They are simply recognized as
incompetent to manage their own affairs, sterilized, and guardians
appointed to look after and support them. We realize that we have no
right to interfere between an individual and his personal goals unless
that individual threatens the liberty of other individuals." Crawford
spoke self-confidently but without any show of self-righteousness.
The waiter approached with a loaded tray and began to place the food on
the table.
* * * * *
Herl kept his gaze from the bowl of steaming gruel before him and the
tremendous steak before his companion. "You don't interfere with
them ... you just take away their jobs and their motivations to be
social and their obligations to be human beings?"
Crawford started to reply: the waiter put the last dishes on the table
and departed: Herl continued speaking hurriedly.
"I don't mean to sound critical of your experiment when I don't know
the whole story yet ... but I should think that Miss Haulwell's
competence to manage her own affairs (since you say that she was the
best of your last three secretaries) was hardly to be judged on the
basis of one small set of lapses."
"I'll talk about that in a moment," Crawford said, rising. "But first
if you'll just change places with me. I haven't been able to eat this
sort of thing for years," he waved at the full dinner, "since a job
like mine wrecks the digestion early. But I couldn't get the waiter in
trouble, you know."
The men changed places, and Herl found his mood of violent opposition
to the social system tempered somewhat by the pleasant prospect.
"For a man without a long experience of Eyefers, your reaction is more
than justified," Crawford continued, frowning at his bowl of mush.
"But our experience had given us certain data. In the first place, when
an individual goes Eyefer, it seems to be a symptom of a decreasing
conviction of social responsibility. When the condition was first
recognized, Eyefers were merely placed under guardianship and their
children's permits stamped to show that they were of Eyefer parentage
and so were debarred from breeding with more select stock. However,
Eyefers tended to reproduce so rapidly and irresponsibly that there
was danger of their becoming a parasitic burden too heavy for our
normal population. That irresponsibility spread to other spheres of
action as well ... they were careless about the property of their
guardians ... if they held jobs still, they had little incentive to
improve since they obviously could not manage their own moneys. Most of
their children grew up to be twice as irresponsible as their parents,
many of them never even applying for permits in the first place but
merely sponging on their parents' guardians.
"Obviously this was no way to build a superior race, a socially
adapted race. So we accepted the obvious solution. If Eyefers wished
to withdraw from social responsibility (as they must subconsciously do
or they wouldn't forget), we insist that they go the whole way. Miss
Haulwell _wants_ to be an Eyefer, in spite of her surface training, or
she wouldn't be one."
Herl nodded, cutting off another bite of the superb steak. The argument
was certainly plausible, and he pushed back the uncomfortable thought
that he should be quicker to see the flaws in it.
Lifting his gaze from his plate, however, he was confronted by the
outline of Crawford against the warm golden radiance of a cloud half
concealing the shining body of a man of such splendid proportions and
so noble and sympathetic a countenance that Herl remained a moment
as if paralyzed, his knife halfway through the steak. The shining
man was shaking his head slowly, regretfully, as if to indicate his
disagreement with Crawford's last remark.
Then Herl lifted his knife free of the meat and pointed with it over
Crawford's shoulder. "Your friend here seems to have another opinion."
Crawford turned in his chair and looked up at the glowing face. "Have I
said something wrong?" he asked the figure, conversationally.
The haze swirled around the long-limbed body and the man shook his head
again. "You really believe it," said the man in the tones of a great
bell. "It is not wrong to tell your belief."
"Will it interfere with my doing business with Captain Hofner?"
Crawford wanted to know.
"No."
"Is there anything you want me to tell him? Something I've left unsaid?"
"No."
"Then run along and let us eat in peace, there's a good chap."
Crawford's words were patronizing, his tone imploring.
"Wait a minute!" Herl said sharply; but the haze seemed to be
dwindling, the figure of the man evaporating before his eyes. More than
anything he wanted to re-establish communication with the girl of the
lobby chair.
"Want to ask him something?" queried the Commissioner. "I think I can
find you another one after we're through eating. It's fairly easy to
get them to come but only hard to get rid of them if you want them to
go."
"Who are they and what are they?" demanded Herl.
"We call them gods. Not because we worship them, you understand, but
because they're so damned beautiful and because they are, for all
practical purposes, omniscient, omnipotent, and as omnipresent as they
want to be. I said 'for all practical purposes' but they don't serve
any practical purposes. They're a by-product of the Eyefers, as far as
we know (and they're strangely close-mouthed about that). I'll finish
my story and you'll know as much as I do."
* * * * *
Herl drew a deep breath. If the goddess of the lobby were even partly
human, he was going to have to know her a great deal better. He
visualized her rounded smiling face, its look of utter awareness, her
graceful arm. Galaxy women were not like this. It must be for this he'd
stayed a bachelor.
Unable to admit aloud his desire and unable to look at Crawford when
thinking of her, he went back to carving the steak, half listening to
the exposition which Crawford continued.
"When people go Eyefer who already have children," the commissioner
went on between sipped spoonfuls of gruel, "we have to institutionalize
the kids. Sterilize them too, to protect the rest of us. You may even
get the idea that we're a planet of petty puritans because we care more
for our race than for particular children and because the 'mortality'
among scientists and artists was very high so that there are few such
among us these days. However, we've taken care of the latter recently
by appointing semi-guardians for the artists and scientists as soon as
they announce their professions. The semi-guardians take care of all
routines at their wards' expense. The architect of the Civil Center
here," he waved a spoon around to indicate their environment, "is that
gray-haired man over there. It justifies the change in rules."
"Why couldn't any rich man hire a 'semi-guardian' who would take care
of the formalities for him?" Herl asked.
Crawford looked shocked. "That would be grossly unfair to the rest of
the population," he insisted. "There is no particular advantage to a
society to perpetuate the strain of wealthy individuals; while we do
need scientists and artists. But to get back to the story ... shortly
after the sterilization program began, a noted psychologist went Eyefer
and managed to get himself assigned by placement to the head of one
of the children's asylums. He worked with the Eyefer children there
and somehow the gods are the result. They have perfect recall, perfect
bodies, telepathy, intuitive perception of the nature of matter,
teleportation, and some precognition. Occasionally even today, a child
disappears from one of the asylums and we have a new god or goddess.
And there you are."
"Are they what Commissioner Guildris was talking about? The Galaxy will
really be excited," Herl said eagerly.
"Heavens, no!" Crawford laughed heartily. "They wouldn't be any more
use to you than they are to us. Their bodies are changed in some way so
that they are nearly pure energy."
Herl had a tight sensation of loss, of incipient grief.
"They don't eat, they don't need clothes, they don't even reproduce.
As far as we can discover, they have no motivations at all except that
they seem to like to watch people doing things ... you could hardly
call it curiosity. So ... since they have no motivations there's no
way to get them to cooperate with society; they can't be bribed or
threatened, paid or deprived. And yet they'd beat any calculator made
if we just had some means of getting them to stay around while we put
the problems. They answer any questions you can ask correctly; but
there's no way we know of to get them to come around when we have the
questions. Oh, you can go out and pretend to do some crazy thing when
you have a problem with all the factors in your head. Maybe one of them
will turn up and you can ask the question before he reads your mind and
fades away ... and maybe you can't. So we call them gods and forget
about them."
Calculators indeed, was Herl's inner reaction, as he tried to recapture
the sensation of being completely understood which he had felt
upstairs in the lobby. She had to be a woman, not a supercalculator.
"But they're so beautiful, so perfect. There must be a reason for
them," he insisted.
"That's the worst thing about them," admitted Crawford. "They make
ordinary people look very drab and uninspired. The Eyefers actually
have several cults which worship them; and I suppose that's a good
thing. Keeps the Eyefers out of trouble. I never heard that they did
anything for their worshippers, though."
Herl thought, "We'll see about that. I think I know what to ask, next
time I get the chance." Aloud he added, "Don't go out of your way to
get one for me to question ... but if one turns up, I am curious about
some things."
"I see you're about through," noticed the commissioner. "Let's get back
up and see if your papers have come."