The Gods Themselves

Lamont had no reason to doubt the basis of that prestige and it was with a certain hero-worshipfulness (the memory of which embarrassed him later and which he strove - with some success - to eliminate from his mind) that he first applied for a chance to interview Hallam at some length in connection with the history he was planning.



Hallam seemed amenable. In thirty years, his position in public esteem had become so lofty one might wonder why his nose did not bleed. Physically, he had aged impressively, if not gracefully. There was a ponderousness to his body that gave him the appearance of circumstantial weightiness and if his face were gross in its features he seemed able to give them the air of a kind of intellectual repose. He still reddened quickly and the easily bruised nature of his self-esteem was a byword.



Hallam had undergone some quick briefing before Lamont's entrance. He said, "You are Dr. Peter Lamont and you've done good work, I'm told, on para-theory. I recall your paper. On para-fusion, wasn't it?"



"Yes, sir."



"Well, refresh my memory. Tell me about it. Informally, of course, as though you were talking to a layman. After all," and he chuckled here, "in a way, I am a layman. I'm just a radiochemist, you know; and no great theoretician, unless you want to count a few concepts now and then."



Lamont accepted this, at the time, as a straightforward statement, and, indeed, the speech may not have been as obscenely condescending as he later insisted on remembering it to have been. It was typical, though, as Lamont later found out, or at least maintained, of Hallam's method of grasping the essentials of the work done by others. He could talk briskly about the subject thereafter without being overparticular, or particular at all, in assigning credit.



But the younger Lamont of the time was rather flattered, and he began at once with that voluble eagerness one experiences in explaining one's own discoveries. "I can't say I did much, Dr. Hallam. Deducing the laws of nature of the para-Universe - the para-laws - is a tricky business. We have so little to go on. I started from what little we know and assumed no new departures that we had no evidence for. With a stronger nuclear interaction, it seems obvious that the fusion of small nuclei would take place more readily."



"Para-fusion," said Hallam.



"Yes, sir. The trick was simply to work out what the details might be. The mathematics involved was somewhat subtle but once a few transformations were made, the difficulties tended to melt away. It turns out, for instance, that lithium hydride can be made to undergo catastrophic fusion at temperatures four orders of magnitude lower there than here. It takes fission-bomb temperatures to explode lithium hydride here, but a mere dynamite charge, so to speak, would turn the trick in the para-Universe. Just possibly lithium hydride in the para-Universe could be ignited with a match, but that's not very likely. We've offered them lithium hydride, you know, since fusion power might be natural for them, but they won't touch it."



"Yes, I know that."



"It would clearly be too risky for them; like using nitroglycerine in ton-lots in rocket engines - only worse."



"Very good. And you are also writing a history of the Pump."



"An informal one, sir. When the manuscript is ready I will ask you to read it, if I may, so that I might have the benefit of your intimate knowledge of events. In fact, I would like to take advantage of some of that knowledge right now if you have a little time."



"I can make some. What is it you want to know?" Hallam was smiling. It was the last time he ever smiled in Lamont's presence.



"The development of an effective and practical Pump, Professor Hallam, took place with extraordinary speed," began Lamont "Once the Pump Project - "



"The Inter-Universe Electron Pump Project," corrected Hallam, still smiling.



"Yes, of course," said Lamont, clearing his throat. "I was merely using the popular name. Once the project started, the engineering details were developed with great rapidity and with little waste motion."



"That is true," said Hallam, with a touch of complacence. "People have tried to tell me that the credit was mine for vigorous and imaginative direction, but I wouldn't care to have you overstress that in your book. The fact is that we had an enormous fund of talent in the project, and I wouldn't want the brilliance of individual members to be dimmed by any exaggeration of my role."



Lamont shook his head with a little annoyance. He found the remark irrelevant. He said, "I don't mean that at all. I mean the intelligence at the other end - the para-men, to use the popular phrase. They started it. We discovered them after the first transfer of plutonium for tungsten; but they discovered us first in order to make the transfer, working on pure theory without the benefit of the hint they gave us. And there's the iron-foil they sent across - "



Hallam's smile had now disappeared, and permanently. He was frowning and he said loudly, "The symbols were never understood. Nothing about them - "



"The geometric figures were understood, sir. I've looked into it and it's quite clear that they were directing the geometry of the Pump. It seems to me that - "



Hallam's chair shoved back with an angry scrape. He said, "Let's not have any of that, young man. We did the work, not they."



"Yes - but isn't it true that they - "



"That they what?"



Lamont became aware now of the storm of emotion he had raised, but he couldn't understand its cause. Uncertainly, he said, "That they are more intelligent than we - that they did the real work. Is there any doubt of that, sir?"



Hallam, red-faced, had heaved himself to his feet "There is every doubt," he shouted." I will not have mysticism here. There is too much of that. See here, young man," he advanced on the still seated and thoroughly astonished Lamont and shook a thick finger at him, "if your history is going to take the attitude that we were puppets in the hands of the para-men, it will not be published from this institution; or at all, if I have my way. I will not have mankind and its intelligence downgraded and I won't have para-men cast in the role of gods."



Lamont could only leave, a puzzled man, utterly upset at having created harsh feeling where he had wanted only to have good will.



And then he found that his historical sources were suddenly drying up. Those who had been loquacious enough a week earlier now remembered nothing and had no time for further interviews.



Lamont was irritated at first and then a slow anger began to build within him. He looked at what he had from a new viewpoint, and now he began to squeeze and insist where earlier he had merely asked. When he met Hallam at department functions, Hallam frowned and looked through him and Lamont began to look scornful in his turn.



The net result was that Lamont found his prime career as para-theoretician beginning to abort and turned more firmly than ever toward his secondary career as science-historian.



"That damned fool," muttered Lamont, reminiscently. "You had to be there, Mike, to see him go into panic at any suggestion that it was the other side that was the moving force. I look back on it and I wonder - how was it possible to meet him, however casually, and not know he would react that way. Just be grateful you never had to work with him."



"I am," said Bronowski, indifferently, "though there are times you're no angel."



"Don't complain. With your sort of work you have no problems."



"Also no interest. Who cares about my sort of work except myself and five others in the world. Maybe six others - if you remember."



Lamont remembered. "Oh, well," he said.