“Professor Vibens, what’s a gostak?” I asked in the solitude of his
office an hour later.
He looked pained.
He leaned back in his chair and looked me over elaborately, and waited
some time before answering.
“Hush!” he finally whispered. “A scientific man may think what he
pleases; but if he says too much, people in general may misjudge
him. As a matter of fact, a good many scientific men are taking this
so-called patriotism seriously. But a mathematician cannot use words
loosely; it has become second nature with him to inquire closely into
the meaning of every term he uses.”
“Well, doesn’t that jargon mean anything at all?” I was beginning to be
puzzled in earnest.
“To me, it does not. But it seems to mean a great deal to the public in
general. It’s making people do things, is it not?”
I stood a while in stupefied silence. That an entire great nation
should become fired up over a meaningless piece of nonsense! Yet,
the astonishing thing was that I had to admit that there was plenty
of precedent for it in the history of my own _z_-dimensional world.
A nation exterminating itself in civil wars to decide which of two
profligate royal families should be privileged to waste the people’s
substance from the throne; a hundred thousand crusaders marching to
death for an idea that to me means nothing; a meaningless, untrue
advertising slogan that sells millions of dollars’ worth of cigarettes
to a nation to the latter’s own detriment--haven’t we seen it over and
over again?
“There’s a public lecture on this stuff tonight at the First Church of
The Salvation,” Professor Vibens suggested.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “I want to look into the thing.”
That afternoon there was another flurry of “extras” over the street;
people gathered in knots and gesticulated with open newspapers.
“War! Let ’em have it!” I heard men shout.
“Is our national honor a rag to be muddied and trampled on?” the
editorials asked.
* * * * *
As far as I could gather from reading the papers, there was a group
of nations across an ocean that was not taking the gostak seriously.
A ship whose pennant bore the slogan had been refused entrance to an
Engtalian harbor because it flew no national ensign. The Executive had
dispatched a diplomatic note. An evangelist who had attempted to preach
the gospel of the distimmed doshes at a public gathering in Itland
had been ridden on a rail and otherwise abused. The Executive was
dispatching a diplomatic note.
Public indignation waxed high. Derogatory remarks about “wops” were
flung about. Shouts of “Holy war!” were heard. I could feel the
tension in the atmosphere as I took my seat in the crowded church
in the evening. I had been assured that the message of the gostak
and the doshes would be thoroughly expounded so that even the most
simple-minded and uneducated people could understand it fully. Although
I had my hands full at the University, I was so puzzled and amazed
at the course that events were taking that I determined to give the
evening to finding out what the “slogan” meant.
There was a good deal of singing before the lecture began. Mimeographed
copies of the words were passed about, but I neglected to preserve
them, and do not remember them. I know there was one solemn hymn
that reverberated harmoniously through the great church, a chanting
repetition of “The Gostak Distims the Doshes.” There was another
stirring martial air, that began: “Oh the Gostak! Oh the Gostak!”--and
ended with a swift cadence on “the Gostak Distims the Doshes!” The
speaker had a rich, eloquent voice and a commanding figure. He stepped
out and bowed solemnly.
“The gostak distims the doshes,” he pronounced impressively. “Is it
not comforting to know that there is a gostak; do we not glow with
pride because the doshes are distimmed? In the entire universe there
is no more profoundly significant fact: the gostak distims the doshes.
Could anything be more complete, yet more tersely emphatic. The gostak
distims the doshes!” Applause. “This thrilling truth affects our
innermost lives. What would we do if the gostak did not distim the
doshes? Without the gostak, without doshes, what would we do? What
would we think? How would we feel?” Applause again.
At first I thought this was some kind of an introduction. I was
inexperienced in listening to popular speeches, lectures, and sermons.
I had spent most of my life in the study of physics and its accessory
sciences. I could not help trying to figure out the meaning of whatever
I heard. When I found none I began to get impatient. I waited some
more, thinking that soon he would begin on the real explanation. After
thirty minutes of the same sort of stuff as I have just quoted, I gave
up trying to listen. I just sat and hoped he would soon be through.
The people applauded and grew more excited. After an hour, I stirred
restlessly; I slouched down in my seat and sat up by turns. After two
hours I grew desperate; I got up and walked out. Most of the people
were too excited to notice me. Only a few of them cast hostile glances
at my retreat.
The next day the mad nightmare began for me. First there was a
snowstorm of “extras” over the city, announcing the sinking of a
merchantman by an Engtalian cruiser. A dispute had arisen between the
officers of the merchantman and the port officials, because the latter
had jeered disrespectfully at the gostak. The merchantman picked up
and started out without having fulfilled all the Customs requirements.
A cruiser followed it and ordered it to return. The captain of the
merchantman told them that the gostak distims the doshes, whereupon the
cruiser fired twice and sank the merchantman. In the afternoon came the
“extras” announcing the Executive’s declaration of war.
Recruiting offices opened; the University was depleted of its young
men; uniformed troops marched through the city, and railway trains full
of them went in and out. Campaigns for raising war loans; homeguards,
women’s auxiliaries, ladies’ aid societies making bandages, young women
enlisting as ambulance drivers--it was indeed war; all of it to the
constantly repeated slogan: “The gostak distims the doshes.”
I could hardly believe that it was really true. There seemed to be no
adequate cause for a war. The huge and powerful nation had dreamed
a silly slogan and flung it in the world’s face. A group of nations
across the water had united into an alliance, claiming they had to
defend themselves against having forced upon them a principle they did
not desire. The whole thing at the bottom had no meaning. It did not
seem possible that there would actually be a war; it seemed more like
going through a lot of elaborate play-acting.
Only when the news came of a vast naval battle of doubtful issue, in
which ships had been sunk and thousands of lives lost, did it come
to me that they meant business. Black bands of mourning appeared on
sleeves and in windows. One of the allied countries was invaded and
a front-line set up. Reports of a division wiped out by an airplane
attack; of forty thousand dead in a five-day battle; of more men and
more money needed, began to make things look real. Haggard men with
bandaged heads and arms in slings appeared on the streets; a church
and an auditorium were converted into hospitals; and trainloads of
wounded were brought in. To convince myself that this thing was so, I
visited these wards, and saw with my own eyes the rows of cots, the
surgeons working on ghastly wounds, the men with a leg missing or with
a hideously disfigured face.
Food became restricted; there was no white bread, and sugar was
rationed. Clothing was of poor quality; coal and oil were obtainable
only on government permit. Businesses were shut down. John was gone;
his parents received news that he was missing in action.
Real it was; there could be no more doubt of it. The thing that made it
seem most real was the picture of a mangled, hopeless wreck of humanity
sent back from the guns, a living protest against the horror of war.
Suddenly someone would say: “The gostak distims the doshes!” and the
poor wounded fragment would straighten up and put out his chest with
pride, and an unquenchable fire would blaze in his eyes. He did not
regret having given his all for that. How could I understand it?
And real it was when the draft was announced. More men were needed;
volunteers were insufficient. Along with the rest, I complied with the
order to register, doing so in a mechanical fashion, thinking little of
it. Suddenly the coldest realization of the reality of it was flung at
me, when I was informed that my name had been drawn and that I would
have to go!
All this time I had looked upon this mess as something outside of me;
something belonging to a different world, of which I was not a part.
Now here was a card summoning me to training camp. With all this death
and mangled humanity in the background, I wasn’t even interested in
this world. I didn’t belong here. To be called upon to undergo all the
horrors of military life, the risk of a horrible death, for no reason
at all! For a silly jumble of meaningless sounds.
I spent a sleepless night in maddened shock from the thing. In the
morning a wild and haggard caricature of myself looked back at me from
the mirror. But I had revolted. I intended to refuse service. If the
words conscientious objector ever meant anything, I certainly was one.
Even if they shot me for treason at once, that would be a fate less
hard to bear than going out and giving my strength and my life for--for
nothing at all.
My apprehensions were quite correct. With my usual success at
self-control over a seething interior, I coolly walked to the draft
office and informed them that I did not believe in their cause and
could not see my way to fight for it. Evidently they had suspected
something of the sort already, for they had the irons on my wrists
before I had hardly done with my speech.
“Period of emergency,” said a beefy tyrant at the desk; “no time for
stringing out a civil trial. Court-martial!”
He said it at me vindictively, and the guards jostled me roughly down
the corridor; even they resented my attitude. The court-martial was
already waiting for me. From the time I walked out of the lecture at
the church I had been under secret surveillance; and they knew my
attitude thoroughly. That is the first thing the president of the court
informed me.
My trial was short. I was informed that I had no valid reason for
objecting. Objectors because of religion, because of nationality, and
similar reasons, were readily understood; a jail sentence to the end of
the war was their usual fate. But I admitted that I had no intrinsic
objection to fighting; I merely jeered at their holy cause. That was
treason unpardonable.
“Sentenced to be shot at sunrise!” the president of the court announced.
The world spun around with me. But only for a second. My self-control
came to my aid. With the curious detachment that comes to us in such
emergencies, I noted that the court-martial was being held in Professor
Vibens’ office; that dingy little Victorian room, where I had first
told my story of traveling by relativity and had first realized that
I had come to the _t_-dimensional world. Apparently it was also to be
the last room I was to see in this same world. I had no false hopes
that the execution would help me back to my own world, as such things
sometimes do in stories. When life is gone, it is gone, whether in one
dimension or another. I would be just as dead in the _z_ dimension as
in the _t_ dimension.
“Now, Einstein, or never!” I thought. “Come to my aid, O Riemaun! O
Lobatchewsky! If anything will save me it will have to be a tensor or a
geodesic.”
I said it to myself rather ironically. Relativity had brought me here.
Could it get me out of this?
Well! Why not?
If the form of a natural law, yea, if a natural object varies with the
observer who expresses it, might not the truth and the meaning of the
gostak slogan also be matter of relativity? It was like making the moon
ride the tree tops again. If I could be a better relativist, and put
myself in these people’s place, perhaps I could understand the gostak.
Perhaps I would even be willing to fight for him or it.
The idea struck me suddenly. I must have straightened up and some
bright change must have passed over my features, for the guards who led
me looked at me curiously and took a firmer grip on me. We had just
descended the steps of the building and had started down the walk.
Making the moon ride the tree tops! That was what I needed now. And
that sounded as silly to me as the gostak. And the gostak did not seem
so silly. I drew a deep breath and felt very much encouraged. The
viewpoint of _relativity_ was somehow coming back to me. Necessity
manages much. I could understand how one might fight for the idea of
a gostak distimming the doshes. I felt almost like telling these men.
Relativity is a wonderful thing. They led me up the slope, between the
rows of poplars.
Then it all suddenly popped into my head; how I had gotten here by
changing my coordinates, insisting to myself that I was going upwards.
Just like making the moon stop and making the trees ride, when you are
out riding at night. Now I was going _upwards_. In my own world, in the
_z_ dimension, this same poplar was _down_ the slope.
“It’s downwards!” I insisted to myself. I shut my eyes, and imagined
the building behind and _above_ me. With my eyes shut, it did seem
downwards. I walked for a long time before opening them. Then I opened
them and looked around.
I was at the end of the avenue of poplars. I was surprised. The avenue
seemed short. Somehow it had become shortened; I had not expected to
reach the end so soon. And where were the guards in olive uniform?
There were none.
I turned around and looked back. The slope extended on backwards above
me. Indeed I had walked downwards. There were no guards, and the fresh,
new building was on the hill behind me.
Woleshensky stood on the steps.
“Now what do you think of a _t_ dimension,” he called out to me.
Woleshensky!
And a new building, modern! Vibens’ office was in an old, Victorian
building. What was there in common between Vibens and Woleshensky? I
drew a deep breath. The comforting realization spread gratefully over
me that I was back in my native dimension. The gostak and the war were
somewhere else. Here were peace and Woleshensky.