A. Furthermore, I think you have been altered more than I have.
Q. You are part of the Unity.
A. And the least altered part. You won't be able to absorb them the
way you can reabsorb me without destroying them as entities.
Q. You set yourself up as the only one to know this. Why?
A. Because I have been the one to make the trips. I have been your
eye.
Q. But the others--the ones you called the spies?
A. They weren't there to look at Man, only to watch _me_. They
weren't even sightseeing--they were slumming. However, I think I
am ceasing to be the only one. I think you are coming to know
these things, too.
Q. Very gratifying. Now, as to the latest trip?
A. There seems to have been a slip-up....
Q. _Another_ one?
A. Different. The ones _I_ made were errors in time; this one is
not mine, and it's in hyper-time. I was trying to explain it to a
friend, but he already knew all about it and that led to the
slip-up. It caused it, yet it came afterward.
Q. How annoying for you. How did you explain hyper-time?
A. I said that when an object moves or changes, time is needed as
one of the coordinates to describe that change. I said that
consciousness moves _through_ time--from Monday to
Tuesday--otherwise we would be merely aware of differences without
experiencing them as change. I said that to describe this motion
of consciousness along the dimension of time, _another_ coordinate
is needed: hyper-time.
Q. And the slip-up--which you claim is not yours?
A. Is in hyper-time. It is the result of the Unity and Mankind
affecting one another. You have, through my efforts, examined
them--and thus changed them. Now they begin to examine you--with
the result that _you_ change.
Q. They begin to examine _us_? You must mean they have examined
_you_.
A. There is a man--a young physicist--and he has found out
something. I think that without quite knowing it, he has detected
you. At all events, he has found out where you are, and I think
that perhaps you are aware.
Q. What makes you say that?
A. Obviously these things work both ways. Heisenberg's principle
says--
Q. We want to hear no more of Heisenberg's principle! There's
enough confusion as it is, without that!
A. I admit it. That's why I decided to--to close my eyes to
everything but essentials on this trip.
Q. It is gratifying to hear you admit something for a change. What
are you "closing your eyes to" in this case?
A. Appearances.
Q. Why?
A. Appearances are deceitful. That is, they are now; they weren't
before, when the Unity was the Unity and Mankind was Mankind, not
something of each. You ask me to keep my objectivity and you don't
tell me how. You can't, of course--your own is too lost for you
even to know it's gone. So I have to work out my way alone and the
best method seems to be to work with as few senses as possible.
That won't give me real objectivity, but it will mean somewhat less
involvement.
Q. The less you see, the more you can observe? Does that make
sense?
A. Nothing does any more. Oh, if you had only stopped in time--no,
that wasn't possible.
Q. Why not?
A. Because, being in hyper-time, the slip-up is both in the past
and the future in simple time. The last trip is going on now....
* * * * *
Katherine was lying on the lab sofa with her hands behind her head.
The sofa was shabby and was alleged to have belonged at one time to a
psychoanalyst. Its present function was to offer temporary rest to
anyone working late in the lab. Today was Sunday and no undergraduates
were there.
"What are you fiddling around with, Phil?" Katherine asked.
"The electron microscope," he said. Phil Kaufman was an assistant
physics professor, short, bony and intense-looking, and at the moment
he was engaged in extra-curricular research.
"You know, I bet this old chaise-longue could many a tale unfold," she
said.
"Well, according to rumor, many have been unfolded on it."
"Professor, your mind wanders. I'm thinking of its previous condition
of servitude. Think of the dreams it used to hear."
Phil Kaufman didn't answer. There was a pause and she said, "This
afternoon you're working with the microscope, and last night it was the
telescope. You were in the observatory until dawn."
"How did you find that out?"
"I have my methods, Watson. I don't see how you expect to keep going on
no sleep at all. Russ is worried about you."
"Pro or con?"
"Pro, of course. He likes you very much. In fact, he thinks you are the
best brain on the faculty."
"Coming from the president, that's praise indeed." Phil got up and went
to a desk, where he looked at some notes. "Speaking as my boss's wife,
would you say he was pro or con about this work I'm doing?"
"I would say he can't make it out. Alternating between the Microcosm
and the Macrocosm. Incidentally, why don't they call that thing in
the observatory a macroscope? I don't think Russ is very good at
understanding the unfamiliar. I was telling him about the concept of
hyper-time the other day, and his reaction was one of solicitude--he
got me a drink." Katherine stretched her arms. "What are you doing now?"
"Checking some figures. You know, that was odd, your bringing up the
business of hyper-time. This thing I'm working on seems to involve it."
"Oh?" Katherine put her arms behind her head again. "Tell me something,
Phil--what does he look like?"
"Doctor Russell Farley?"
"Yes. I suppose it's a funny sort of question to ask about one's
husband. How does he look to you?"
"Like the youngest college president in America, I guess. Brawny but
brainy. You make what they call a handsome couple."
"Yes, I was going to ask you what I looked like, only it's a waste of
time. People never tell you."
"I can," Phil said, "but I won't, for fear of giving you a swelled
head."
* * * * *
"As a matter of fact, it's silly of me to ask," she went on. "I
wouldn't understand. I don't even know what 'pretty' means, although
I have a dim idea what 'ugly' does. Color is another enigma to me.
Somebody once told me it's like a smell, but when I get a bad cold,
I can't remember what smells are like. It's like not being able to
think of the word 'bubble' when your mouth is wide open--you think of
'_Ah_-uh.'"
"I'll tell you one thing about yourself," Phil said. "You don't look as
though...."
"As though I was blind?"
"Correct. And it's incredible the way you get around. You never bump
into anything, and you look people right in the eye when they talk to
you."
"They say it's hearing faint echoes from an obstacle--like a bat.
Personally, I _feel_ the wall in front of me. I admit when my
ears are stopped up I can't hear the wall, but I'm not so sure
that's a convincing proof. It's the same with pit vipers--some
smart investigator discovered that when you plug up their little
heat-detecting organs--I guess those are the pits--they can't locate
warm prey in the dark. Conversely, in the dark and not plugged up, they
will strike at a hot-water bottle."
"Sounds pretty convincing to me," Phil said, and went back to the
electron microscope.
"Tush," Katherine said. "How about people not wanting to smoke in the
dark? Does that prove that the sense of taste depends on sight? _I_
smoke. In fact, you might bring me a cigarette and an ashtray. The only
reason most blind people don't smoke is they're afraid of fire." She
took the cigarette Phil brought her. "Thanks."
"Aren't you afraid of fire?" he asked.
"Of course not. I can detect a match flame at fifteen feet."
"You ought to go to Duke University sometime and have Rhine take a look
at you."
"I did. All he said was 'Hmm,' and I joined the other statistics."
There was silence for a while, interrupted at one point by a muffled
"Damn!" from Phil peering into the electron microscope, and the warm
sun lay across Katherine's lap. Finally he straightened up and switched
off the current. "Well, it's there, all right," he said, and got up and
went to the couch and sat at her feet.
"What is?"
"The red shift."
"Aren't you confusing things?" she said. "You're not in the observatory
now, Buster; this is the lab. I thought the red shift was the recession
of the distant galaxies ... whatever 'red' is."
"Quite right, Holmes. However, in this case, it's the recession of
the not-so-distant atoms. They are small-sized solar systems, too,
in a way, and when I say 'red' I mean something I can only infer
mathematically, because I'm not dealing with light in the ordinary
sense."
"You mean they're _receding_?"
"Only in this context," he said. "Motion is length over time; in this
case, it's length over hyper-time, so they're still here in the lab."
"I'm relieved to hear it," she said. "However, I should think they'd be
receding into tomorrow."
"They are, but into yesterday, and new ones from tomorrow are
continually coming in to take their place. It's like Fred Hoyle's
theory of the continuous birth of hydrogen."
"You're making me feel like my poor husband," Katherine said. "I
understand the necessity of hyper-time to describe the motion of
consciousness along time, but what's this got to do with the atoms?"
* * * * *
There was a knock at the door and Phil stood up, just as Doctor
Russell Chalmers Farley came in without waiting for an answer. Phil
and Katherine felt faintly embarrassed--there was scarcely any need to
knock on the door to the physics lab; it somehow suggested that the
door should be kept open when entertaining callers.
Doctor Farley was a handsome man of thirty-eight with a blond mustache
that gave him the look of a Kipling colonial officer.
"Ah, there you are, Katherine," he said cheerfully. "Hello, Kaufman.
How's the Research Magnificent?"
"It's beginning to show signs of life," Phil said. "I think I can
detect a sort of fetal pulse."
Doctor Farley blinked his pale eyelashes and smiled. He sat down at the
end of the couch where Phil had been sitting and looked up at him. Part
of his charm was that, when he talked to a man shorter than himself,
he got below him and looked up. At his evening "sherries" at home, he
had a way of deferring to the newest and least important visitor, who
was thus raised to the temporary rank of philosopher, while Russell
Chalmers Farley was reduced to the position of listener.
The role of humble servitor of the Truth was his most useful one--it
had worked rather well with Katherine, and he had an adroit and
imaginative way of expressing his ideas, which usually disguised the
fact that they were generally borrowed.
They had met at a street corner in New York City where she was waiting
for the sound of traffic to abate so that she could cross. He was on
the opposite side, and with his extraordinary eyesight and intuition
instantly recognized that the beautiful, odd-looking girl facing him
on the other side of the street was blind. He was at her side before
the light--and the sound of traffic--had changed, and said, "I hope you
don't think I'm being forward, but let me offer you my arm. Taxis have
a way of making illegal turns sometimes...."
"You are very kind," she replied, pulling him back from the path of a
taxi making an illegal turn. "You have a very nice voice," she said
as they got to the other side. "I guess being blind makes one ...
forward!" She laughed and started to walk on.
"No, please wait!" he said, and caught up with her. "I wish you hadn't
said that. It can be taken in another way: that I am forward because
you are blind. I should like to say that _you_ have a very nice voice."
She stopped and laughed again. "That's one of the nicest things I've
ever had said to me!"
"Do let's ... I mean would you let me...." He floundered, and laughed,
too. "Can't we have a drink together? Now?"
"I think it would be lovely," she said.
Later on, he said to her, "You may think this impertinent of me, but
you make me envy you. If I were braver, I should wish that I were
blind. You actually see more than I do."
* * * * *
Katherine was intrigued. She had been told this before, but always
with mystical and pseudo-religious implications. This man, with the
attractive voice and smell, had no trace of the mystic.
"Let me tell you a fable to illustrate what I mean," he went on. "There
was a man who was born blind, and he went to work as a coal miner
because the darkness was no hindrance to him. One day while he was
working alone in an unlighted gallery, his sight was miraculously given
to him.... He shouted out in amazement and awe, and the other miners
came stumbling to him in the total darkness.
"'What is it?' they cried. 'What's the matter?'
"'I can see!' he told them. But they were puzzled, for they had brought
no lights.
"'What can you see?' they asked. 'There is nothing to be seen here in
the dark.'
"'I see _black_!' he said. 'In front of my face is blackness--however,
at the back of my head, I'm still blind and I see nothing.'"